Skip to main content

Full text of "Washington College magazine, Spring 1993"

See other formats 


tt2if/£&0^% 


WASHINGTON      COLLEGE      MAGAZINE 


'*  'i%i*«BMW 

^"^■UH^ 

'*  M^^^Bk  A 

tv_ 

«■                     r  ib^jH       4 

^^""v      j^t-^fl 

■^N 

•flite 

J^^R 

^K%;„  .„., 

^^H^%      »                  «  '  fit     Bi    |    v  V        Mf^                      V« 

1  s>jw*^ 

rC  To^sfs  Jfs  Alumni  Sweetheart 


VTER  REPORTS  FROM  l  III  "CM  DIIOMI  1*1 
il\(.  Illl  LIVES  OF  MEDIEVAL  WOMEN 


To  Whom  It  Has  Concerned, 

A  few  days  before  Christmas,  our 
doctor,  Eric  Ciganek  '73,  found  "a 
spot"  on  Eric  Dennard's  liver.  Eric 
Dennard  is  the  man  I  love.  Very 
much.  Eric  will  be  a  famous  artist 
one  day.  He  is  already  a  famous  eater 
and  a  great  cook.  He  was  about  to 
become  the  subject  of  many  painful 
and  disabling  medical  tests.  Word 
raced  through  WC  that  Dennard,  the 
gourmand,  was  a  patient/prisoner  of 
Trams,  the  woman  whose  tuna 
casserole  resembles  the  inside  of 
Tut's  tomb,  and  the  college  began  to 
cook  for  us.  One  night  we  came 
home  from  these  tests  especially 
exhausted  to  find  shrimp  and  rock 
fish  prepared  by  Chuck  Trout.  His 
note  read,  "Just  heat  and  eat."  Eric's 
weary  spirits  soared.  I  sobbed.  "Just 
heat"  was  too  hard.  How  high  the 
oven  and  for  how  long?  Katherine 
Trout  kindly  directed  by  phone. 

On  New  Year's  Day  the  doctors 
gave  us  their  diagnosis  of  inoperable 
cancer.  Though  this  had  been  the 
boogie  man  in  our  closet,  nothing 
prepares  one  to  meet  him  face  to  face. 
Dr.  Ciganek  worked  overtime  to 
collect  the  information  we  would 
need  to  challenge  this  disease  and  he 
advised  us  that  a  liver  transplant 
would  be  our  greatest  hope  for 
saving  Eric's  life. 

But  what  does  an  alumni  director 
know  about  how  to  pursue  life  and 
death  matters? 

My  supervisor,  Shawn  Lyons, 
excused  me  from  my  administrative 
duties.  Mackey  Dutton  '51,  my  part- 
time  associate,  came  in  on  her  days 
off  to  assume  my  responsibilities. 
She  is  still  working  to  put  together 


the  pieces  of  alumni  plans  that  I  left 
"organized"  in  a  system  that  only  I 
can  understand.  On  my  desk,  draft 
schedules  for  Reunion  '93  are 
shuffled  in  with  med-line  abstracts 
about  organ  transplantation.  In  the 
latter,  the  names  of  two  hospitals 
predominate.  They  are  Johns  Hop- 
kins and  the  University  of  Pittsburgh 
Medical  Center. 

Eric's  cancerous  liver  is  a  type  that 
is  not  usually  considered  for  trans- 
plant. Dr.  Ciganek  told  us  that  this 
would  be  the  time  to  pull  any  strings 
that  might  dangle  from  these  famous 
places  into  our  ordinary  lives.  So  I 
called  an  old  friend  who  plays 
political  strings  like  cat's  cradle. 
Douglass  Cater  called  Alonzo  Decker, 
benefactor  to  both  WC  and  Hopkins, 
and  then  he  called  me  back  to  say  that 
Eric's  records  would  receive  special 
attention  at  the  busy  hospital. 

Our  oncologist  (who  did  not  attend 
WC)  was  still  pessimistic  about  Eric 
being  called  to  Hopkins  for  an 
evaluation.  Pittsburgh's,  he  said,  were 
the  pioneers  who  might  accept  this 
challenge. 

Joyce  Cafritz,  chair  of  the  1782 
Society,  and  David  Wheelan  '78  were 
helping  me  with  my  paper  chase. 
Both  reminded  me  Ted  Kurze  '43  had 
once  been  Chief  of  Neurosurgery  at 
UPMC.  I  sent  a  panicked  FAX  to  Dr. 
Kurze  in  California  and  he  called  me 
back  within  minutes.  By  the  next  day 
he  had  arranged  for  an  important 
friend  at  this  hospital  to  hand-carry 
Eric's  case  to  the  transplant  office  for 
careful  consideration. 

The  paper  work  was  hard,  but  the 
waiting  was  worse.  Still  our 
oncologist  warned  us  not  to  be 
hopeful.  Still  Dr.  Ciganek  would  not 
allow  us  to  get  discouraged.  Each  day 
someone  would  call  from  the  colleee 


to  ask  what  Eric  would  like  for 
dinner. 

Last  Thursday  we  were  in  the 
oncologist's  office  when  both 
Hopkins  and  Pittsburgh  called  to 
schedule  Eric  for  transplant  evalua- 
tions. 

This  does  not  mean  that  Eric  will 
be  given  a  a  new  liver.  It  means  that 
he  is  allowed  this  hope.  It  means  that 
we  have  weeks  of  traveling  and  tests 
ahead  as  he  is  evaluated  as  a  candi- 
date for  these  transplant  programs. 
Our  friends  have  guided  us  as  far  as 
they  can,  in  the  right  direction  that  I 
could  not  have  found  alone.  Now 
Eric's  and  my  future  is,  once  again,  in 
the  hands  of  Fate. 

This  letter  was  begun  as  an 
explanation  as  to  why  I  am  unable  to 
work  for  alumni  right  now.  President 
Trout  has  graciously  granted  my 
request  for  an  indefinite  leave  of 
absence.  But  this  letter  has  come  to 
be  about  what  our  college  and  our 
alumni  do  best. 

I  did  not  know  when  I  sat  in  the 
window  sill  of  Bill  Smith  for  Forms 
of  Lit.  class,  or  when,  much  later,  I 
was  accepted  for  an  administrative 
position  here,  that  I  was  being 
included  in  a  society  that  would,  in 
the  scariest  time  of  my  life,  keep  me 
safe.  Colleagues  and  alumni  and 
friends  have  come  together  now  to 
offer  their  support  when  I  need  it 
most.  Together  they  have  formed  a 
safety  net  below  me.  I  feel  now  that 
no  matter  how  high  the  hopes  from 
which  I  might  fall,  I  will  never, 
because  of  this  careful  community, 
be  allowed  to  hit  rock  bottom.  In  this 
most  frightening  and  confusing  of 
times,  I  realize  how  privileged  I  am. 
And  I  am  grateful  to  all  of  you. 
Pat  Trams  '75 
Director  of  Alumni  Affairs 


WASHINGTON      COLLEGE      MAGAZINE 


^27L/£U<ZL/?sZerZ^ 


VOLUME  XLI  NO.  3 
SPRING  1993 
USPS  667-260 

STAFF 

Editor:  Meredith  Dames  Hadaway 
Managing  Editor:  Marcia  Landskroener 
Editorial  Assistant:  Joanne  Fairclrild  '84 
Editorial  Consultant:  Kevin  O'Keefe  '74 
Contributing  Writers:  Martin  E.  Williams  '75, 
Mackey  Dutton  '51  (Class  Notes). 

Printing  and  Mailing,  American  Press,  Inc. 
Typesetting,  layout,  and  paste-up  are  done 
at  Washington  College  using  the  Macintosh 
II,  Apple  LaserWriter  Plus,  and  PageMaker 
software.  Camera  copy  was  produced  on 
the  Linotype  Linotronic  L300  at  Spectrum 
Arts  in  Baltimore,  Maryland. 

Washington  College  Magazine  (USPS  667-260) 
is  published  quarterly  in  May,  August, 
November,  and  February.  Second  class 
postage  paid  at  Gordonsville,  Virginia 
22942,  an  additional  mailing  office. 
POSTMASTER:  Send  address  changes  to 
Washington  College  Magazine,  300 
Washington  Avenue,  Chestertown, 
Maryland  21620-1197.  Copyright  1992 
Washington  College. 

Address  correspondence  to  Washington 
College  Magazine,  300  Washington  Avenue, 
Washington  College,  Chestertown,  MD 
21620.  (Telephone:  410-778-2800.) 


FEATURES 


WC  Sweethearts  Tell  Tales  Of  True  Love  10 

In  a  special  Valentine's  Day  feature,  alumni  couples  share 
their  "engaging"  stories. 

Sue  De  Pasquale  '87 

Studying  The  Lives  Of  Medieval  Women  16 

Newly-translated  accounts  of  life  in  the  middle  ages  shed 
light  on  the  role  of  women  in  medieval  society. 
Emilie  Amt 

You  Can  Go  Home  Again,  Thomas  Wolfe  21 

WC's  President  Emeritus  returns  to  his  roots,  and  flourishes. 

Douglass  Cater 

DEPARTMENTS 

The  Reporter  2 

Literary  luminaries  join  celebration  of  Miller  Library's 
200,000th  volume.  Carl  Rowan  visits  campus.  Literary  House 
launches  new  publishing  venture.  The  AIDS  quilt  brings  new 
awareness.  Professor  Spilich's  smoking  study  attracts 
international  attention. 

Alumni  Reporter  25 

Alumni  Board  nominations.  Reunion  schedule. 


Class  Notes 


27 


About  the  Cover:  Hilda  '38  and  Fred  Micari 
'40  recently  celebrated  their  fiftieth 
wedding  anniversary.  In  a  Valentine's  Day 
tribute,  the  WCM  toasts  the  Micaris  and 
other  Washington  College  sweethearts. 
Photo:  Michael  Ciesielski. 


Currents 

Richard  Harwood  on  the  role  of  journalists  in  the  age  of 

electronic  media. 


32 


WASHINGTON       COLLEGE 


The  Reporter 


Celebrating 
Miller  Library's 
200,000th 
Volume 


Cold  weather  forced  the  crowd 
of  Miller  Library  well-wishers 
indoors  to  Tawes  Theatre,  but 
the  winds  did  little  to  dampen  the 
spirit  of  the  celebration  to  mark  the 
shelving  of  the  Library's  200,000th  vol- 
ume. 

College  President  Charles  H.  Trout, 
Board  Chairman  Louis  L.  Goldstein 
'35,  and  Librarian  William  Tubbs 
shared  the  spotlight  with  literary  lumi- 
naries John  Barth,  Lucille  Wallop,  and 
Jonathan  Segal  '66  and  John  Danz,  the 
Baltimore  bibliophile  who  donated  an 
extensive  collection  of  Marylandia  to 
the  College.  All  were  on  hand  to  recog- 
nize the  important  role  books  and 
writers  and  libraries  play  in  the  lives 
of  perpetual  learners. 

It  was  from  John  Danz's  collection  of 
books  that  the  200,000th  volume  was 
chosen  —  a  copy  of  H.  L.  Mencken's 
Treatise  on  the  Gods  inscribed  from 
Mencken  to  Maryland  historian  Gerald 
Johnson.  The  Danz  collection,  which 
reflects  his  interest  in  Maryland  his- 
tory, economy,  and  culture,  includes 
the  complete  works  of  Mencken,  a  col- 
lection of  history  books  by  Gerald 
Johnson,  the  poetry  of  Baltimorean 
Lizette  Woodward  Reece,  and  the 
works  of  the  Eastern  Shore  novelist, 
John  Barth.  Books  on  the  Chesapeake 
Bay,  Maryland  commerce  and  rail- 
roads, Maryland  political  figures,  and 
the  Baltimore  Museum  of  Art  round 
out  the  Danz  collection.  A  special  trea- 


sure included  in  the  Danz  gift  is  a  pho- 
tograph of  Gerald  Johnson  taken  by 
Aubrey  Bodine,  a  famous  photogra- 
pher from  Baltimore. 

"We  have  made  a  conscious  effort  to 
build  our  Maryland  collection,"  says 
Head  Librarian  William  Tubbs.  "But  it 
would  have  taken  us  years  to  build  this 
particular  collection,  even  if  we  had  the 
money." 

The  collection  is  also  expected  to 
support  the  development  of  several 
courses  in  the  Chesapeake  Regional 
Studies  program  and  will  provide  pri- 
mary sources  for  students  researching 
various  topics  relating  to  Maryland. 
Part  of  the  Danz  gift  will  be  shelved  in 
the  Newlin  Room  of  Miller  Library; 
part  will  be  placed  on  non-circulating 
shelves  in  the  Sophie  Kerr  Room. 

"This  is  the  kind  of  gift  this  Library 
needs,"  says  Tubbs.  "The  books  are 
well-chosen  and  they  elevate  our  exist- 
ing Maryland  collection  to  an  enviable 
status." 


Presiding  over  the  Library  Celebration 
were  (from  left):  Professor  Robert  Day, 
Librarian  William  Tubbs,  President 
Charles  H.  Trout,  John  Barth,  Lucille 
Wallop,  Jonathan  Segal  '66,  and  John 
Danz. 


In  delivering  his  address  for  the  oc- 
casion, an  original  essay  entitled 
"Browsing,"  John  Barth  asked  the 
question:  "Is  [200,000  books]  a  lot  of 
books?  Quite  a  few  books?  'Right 
many,'  as  we  Eastern  Shore  folks 
sometimes  say?  Only  a  few?  Too 
many?  Just  enough?" 

"Unanswerable  questions,"  Barth 
answered,  but  the  intimation  is  that 
books  are  like  friends  —  one  can 
never  have  too  many.  Especially  at  a 
good  liberal  arts  college.  A  library, 
which  Barth  described  as,  "a  collection 
of  possible  futures,"  should  be  "as  big 
as  possible." 

In  helping  plan  the  Library  Celebra- 


Washington  College  Magazine  /Spring  1993 


tion,  Robert  Day,  chair  of  the  Library 
Committee  and  Director  of  the  O'Neill 
Literary  House,  hoped  that  the  event 
"would  raise  the  community's  aware- 
ness of  the  library  and  its  needs,  which 
are  many,  as  well  as  its  benefits,  which 
are  many.  The  Library  is  the  intellec- 
tual soul  of  the  college.  We  must  nur- 
ture it,  feed  it,  water  its  roots  so  its 
leaves  will  grow,  so  to  speak.  And  we 
should  enjoy  its  fruits.  John  Barth 
made  browsing  in  a  library  seem  as 
natural  as  breathing." 


Volunteers  Launch 
Literary  House  Press 

It  was  only  a  matter  of  time  before 
the  seed  planted  with  the  acquisi- 
tion of  the  first  antique  letterpress  for 
the  O'Neill  Literary  House  blossomed. 
This  fall,  six  years  after  the  first  press 
was  installed  on  campus  and  with 
three  "practice  books"  under  its  belt, 
the  Literary  House  is  taking  its  first 
step  into  the  world  of  publishing  with 


the  creation  of  the  Literary  House 
Press. 

Robert  Day,  professor  of  English 
and  director  of  the  O'Neill  Literary 
House,  has  assembled  an  experienced 
staff  to  guide  the  Literary  House  Press 
in  its  infancy.  Richard  Harwood,  re- 
tired ombudsman  for  the  Washington 
Post,  is  executive  editor.  Maureen 
Jacoby,  previously  managing  editor  of 
the  Smithsonian  Institution  Press, 
serves  as  managing  editor.  William 
"Chappie"  Bowie  '75,  president  of 


Jonathan  Segal  '66 
Shares  His  Passion 
For  Publishing 

Jonathan  B.  Segal  '66,  vice  presi- 
dent and  senior  editor  at  Alfred  A. 
Knopf,  believes  publishing  houses 
have  a  responsiblity  to  publish  au- 
thors who  have  something  impor- 
tant to  say  and  to  take  chances  on 
new  writers.  They  also  have  finan- 
cial obligations  to  meet.  Knopf  man- 
ages to  balance  these  two  objectives 
successfully. 

"I  don't  think  it's  ugly  to  publish 
things  that  sell,  and  quality  can  sell," 
Segal  told  a  group  of  students  gath- 
ered in  the  O'Neill  Literary  House 
on  the  eve  of  the  Miller  Library  Cel- 
ebration. "When  a  book  like  Anne 
Rice's  The  Tale  of  the  Body  Thief 
makes  number  one  on  the  best-seller 
list  for  several  weeks,  that  allows  us 
to  continue  publishing  first  novels 
and  poetry  collections." 

Segal  shared  with  the  group  of 
students  his  insights  into  the  world 
of  editing  and  publishing.  "You 
have  to  really  love  to  read,"  he  said, 
explaining  that  he  and  even  Knopf 
president  Sonny  Mehta  often  spend 
weekends  reading  manuscripts. 
"You  develop  relationships  with 
writers.  You  negotiate  with  agents. 
You  seek  a  high  standard.  If  ideas 
make  a  difference  to  you,  then  pub- 
lishing can  be  a  fascinating  career." 

During  college,  Segal's  goal  in  life 
was  to  work  for  The  New  York  Times. 
He  managed  to  land  a  job  shortly  af- 
ter graduation.  "My  first  day  there," 
he  recalled,  "my  tasks  were  to  get 
coffee  for  the  editors  and  keep  the 
Xerox  machine  busy."  Things  soon 
got  better.  He  began  writing  book 


reviews,  news  stories,  and  feature  sto- 
ries. He  started  editing.  And  when  The 
Times  acquired  a  book  company  (it  was 
named  Times  Books),  he  was  asked  to 
acquire  and  edit  books  for  it.  Segal 
worked  with  Senator  Bill  Bradley  and 
many  Times  journalists  on  their  books, 
and  he  helped  put  together  the  #l-best 
seller,  The  White  House  Transcripts,  from 
President  Nixon's  taped  Watergate 
conversations. 

"I  liked  the  pace  of  publishing  and  I 
liked  working  with  writers,"  he  said. 
He  joined  Simon  &  Schuster  in  1977, 
where  he  worked  with  other  journalists 
such  as  Jeff  Greenfield  and  Ellen 
Goodman.  Five  years  later  he  moved 
back  to  Times  Books,  as  editor  in  chief, 
where  he  published  two  books  that 
won  Pulitzer  Prizes:  Move  Your 
Shadow:  South  Africa,  Black  and  White  by 
Joseph  Lelyveld,  and  Arab  and  few: 
Wounded  Spirits  in  a  Promised  Land  by 
David  K.  Shipler.  He  also  conceived 


and  published  the  #1  best-seller  The 
Tower  Commission  Report  on  the  Iran- 
Contra  scandal.  The  book  was  pro- 
duced in  five  days  —  and  it  sold 
450,000  copies. 

Segal  joined  Knopf  in  1988.  Edi- 
tors there  have  specialties  but  are 
free  to  publish  a  wide  range  of 
books,  he  explained.  His  particular 
interests  are  foreign  events,  politics, 
social  issues,  history,  science,  and  bi- 
ography. He  recently  negotiated  a 
contract  to  publish  Arthur  Ashe's 
memoirs.  Among  his  other  authors 
are  Gay  Talese,  Woody  Allen,  and 
Labor  Secretary  designate  Robert  B. 
Reich  ("whose  The  Work  of  Nations 
changed  the  way  I  look  at  America 
and  the  future"). 

"This  is  a  people-driven  business, 
and  there  is  no  easy  formula  for  suc- 
cess," he  said.  "You  go  on  instinct 
and  passion,  and  hope  you  get  good 
reviews." 


Washington  College  Magazine/Sprmg  1993 


Bowie  Associates,  a  book  designing 
company  in  Baltimore,  serves  as  senior 
editor.  Will  Lockwood,  the  founder 
and  retired  director  of  the  Wesleyan 
University  Press,  is  consultant.  And 
Mike  Kaylor,  master  printer,  is  produc- 
tion manager. 

"All  of  these  people  are  volunteers," 
says  Day,  "donating  their  professional 
time  to  start  a  working,  teaching  press. 
"The  idea  is,  eventually,  to  employ  stu- 
dents in  business,  graphic  arts,  editing, 
printing,  sales  —  to  be  a  literary 
entepreneurial  laboratory." 

The  intent  of  the  Literary  House 
Press  is  to  publish  in  three  general  ar- 
eas: books  relating  to  the  Chesapeake 
Bav  region,  particularly  the  Eastern 
Shore;  books  of  general  interest  and  lit- 
erary merit,  including  novels,  history, 
poetry,  biography,  and  natural  science; 
and  chap  books  or  monographs  of  lec- 
tures, symposia,  or  scholarly  studies 
associated  with  Washington  College. 

The  first  project  of  the  year  is  actu- 
ally a  collaborative  effort  with  the 
Chesapeake  Bay  Maritime  Museum  in 
St.  Michaels.  Maryland's  Oyster  Navy: 
The  First  Fifty  Years  is  a  scholarly,  his- 
torical account  of  the  formation  of  the 
Marine  Police.  The  author,  Norman  H. 
Plummer,  donated  the  project  to  the 
Maritime  Museum.  Through  the 
College's  recently  signed  collaborative 
agreement  with  the  Museum,  the  book 
project  came  to  Bob  Day's  attention. 

The  book  will  be  printed  on  offset, 
and  assembled  and  bound  at  the 
O'Neill  Literary  House. 

The  second  project  is  a  collection  of 
the  poetry  of  Gilbert  Byron,  the  late 
Eastern  Shore  naturalist,  writer,  and 
1923  graduate  of  Washington  College. 
Day  describes  this  "Best  of  Gilbert 


Byron"  as  a  social  document  of  the 
Eastern  Shore.  William  "Chappie" 
Bowie  is  the  volume  editor;  Jack 
Schroeder  '58  will  illustrate  the  book. 
A  limited  edition  of  the  book  will  be 
printed  on  the  College's  Heidelberg 
press  and  a  trade  edition  will  be 
printed  on  offset. 

The  benefit  to  students  of  having  a 
working  press  on  campus  will  be  sig- 
nificant, says  Day.  While  the  original 
concept  of  the  press  room  was  to  show 
students  the  relationship  between 
printing  and  literature,  a  small  pub- 
lishing house  will  offer  more  students 
greater  opportunities  to  learn.  "If  it 
were  poetry,  I'd  describe  it  as  an  'or- 
ganic rhyme,'"  says  Day,  "words  that 
not  only  sound  alike  but  have  a  rela- 
tionship. The  Literary  House  Press 
will  be  an  organic  rhyme  of  liberal  arts 
and  publishing." 

Carl  Rowan  Brings 
"Project  Excellence" 
To  Washington 
College 

Carl  T.  Rowan,  a  nationally  syndi- 
cated columnist,  an  original  pan- 
elist on  the  top-rated  talk  show  "In- 
side Washington,"  and  one  of  the  most 
popular  opinion-makers  on  the  public 
lecture  circuit,  visited  Washington 
College  in  early  December  to  share 
with  students  some  of  the  experiences 
that  helped  shape  his  perspective  on 
American  politics. 

Rowan,  a  child  of  America's  Great 
Depression  who  overcame  poverty 
and  racial  discrimination  to  achieve 


success  as  a  journalist,  established  a 
scholarship  program  known  as 
"Project  Excellence"  to  inspire  disad- 
vantaged youngsters  to  do  well  in 
school,  go  to  college,  and  escape  the 
confines  of  poverty.  Since  its  inception 
the  program  has  given  financial  assis- 
tance to  304  college-bound  minority 
students,  two  of  whom  are  now  at 
Washington  College.  Last  spring, 
"Project  Excellence"  awarded  approxi- 
mately $1  million  to  more  than  70  stu- 
dents who  are  attending  some  of  the 
nation's  most  prestigious  colleges  and 
universities. 

Despite  the  naysayers,  Rowan  said 
you  can  solve  problems  "by  throwing 
money  at  them."  He  recalled  the  day 
he  had  to  leave  East  Tennessee  State 
College  because  he  did  not  have  $20  to 
pay  his  tuition  for  the  next  quarter. 
Among  the  discarded  green  bus  trans- 
fer tickets  he  passed  on  his  way  to  a  lo- 
cal diner,  he  found  a  crumpled  S20  bill. 
He  had  "found"  his  chance  to  continue 
his  college  education. 

"I  hope  that  we  now  have  in  Wash- 
ington, DC.  people  who  understand 
that  today  there  are  millions  of  young- 
sters out  there  growing  up  as  Carl 
Rowan  did,  and  that  they  look  to  fed- 
eral programs  for  their  $20  bill.  I  hope 
they  will  be  wise  enough  not  to  snatch 
it  away." 

Another  opportunity  presented  itself 
to  Rowan  when  he  was  asked  to  take 
an  officer  candidate  test  for  the  Navy. 
He  served  in  the  military  as  a  commu- 
nications officer  and  upon  his  dis- 
charge landed  a  job  as  a  newspaper  re- 
porter. 

Rowan  went  on  to  a  distinguished 
career  as  Ambassador  to  Finland  and 
as  Director  of  the  U.S.  Information 
Agency.  He  is  the  author  of  seven 
books,  including  the  bestseller,  Break- 
ing Barriers,  and  a  new  book  called 
Dream  Makers,  Dream  Breakers:  The 
World  of  Justice  Thurgood  Marshall.  He 
also  has  received  five  Emmvs  for  his 
television  work. 


Calvin  Cafritz  (far  right),  trustee  of  the 
Morris  ami  Gwendolyn  Cafritz  Founda- 
tion, and  wife  Joyce  (far  left)  hosted  a 
dinner  at  their  home  to  give  students  a>i 
opportunity  to  talk  informally  with  Carl 
Rowan  (second  from  left).  With  the 
support  of  the  Cafritz  Foundation,  Project 
Excellence  selected  two  students,  includ- 
ing Andre  Taylor  (second  from  right),  to 
attend  Washington  College. 


Washington  College  Magazine /S;>rm£  1993 


Weatherholtz  And 
McCormick  Keep 
Good  Company 

Karen  Weatherholtz  '72  has 
found  her  values  and  those  of 
her  company  complement  each 
other  as  perfectly  as  basil  and  to- 
mato sauce.  The  vice  president  for 
human  relations  at  McCormick  & 
Company,  Inc.,  the  international 
spice  company  headquartered  in 
Sparks,  Maryland,  Weatherholtz  ad- 
vised students  of  the  Department  of 
Business  Management  to  consider 
carefully  not  only  what  field  to  enter 
and  what  type  and  size  company 
they  would  like  to  work  for,  but 
most  importantly  the  culture  and 
values  of  a  potential  employer. 

"I've  worked  in  the  field  of  hu- 
man relations  during  my  entire  ca- 
reer," she  said  during  a  lunch  with 
business  students.  "But  I  may  not 
have  been  able  to  accomplish  the 
things  I've  done  at  McCormick  at  a 
company  with  a  very  different  cul' 
hire.  " 

McCormick  offers  many  innova- 
tive training  programs  and  career 
development  services,  awards  schol- 
arships to  the  children  of 
McCormick  employees,  helps  em- 
ployees continue  their  own  educa- 
tion, and  offers  profit  sharing,  em- 
ployee dividends,  and  other  incen- 
tives for  outstanding  job  perfor- 
mance. 

It  was  largely  because  McCormick 
values  its  employees  and  the  con- 
cept of  human  relations  that  she  was 
elected  to  McCormick's  board  last 


January,  she  says.  The  fact  that  she  be- 
came the  first  woman  to  sit  on  the 
board  of  the  103-year-old  specialty 
food  company  was  coincidental,  and 
rightfully  so.  "If  I  thought  I  was  being 
asked  to  join  the  board  just  because  I 
was  a  woman,  and  not  because  of  my 
contributions,  I  would  have  been  very 
disappointed. 

"When  Buzz  McCormick,  the  chair- 
man of  the  company,  called  me  into 
the  board  meeting  that  day,  [the  an- 
nouncement] came  as  a  complete  sur- 
prise," she  recalls.  "He  told  me: 
'We're  delighted  to  have  a  woman  on 
the  board,  but  I  want  you  to  know  that 
you're  here  because  you  earned  it.' 
That  meant  a  lot  to  me.  Women  can 
and  will  succeed  on  their  own  merit." 

Weatherholtz,  a  wife  and  mother 
who  holds  an  MBA  from  Loyola  Col- 
lege, got  her  start  in  personnel  man- 
agement with  a  Maryland  bank.  In 
1977  she  joined  McCormick  as  the  hu- 
man relations  supervisor  for  the 
company's  manufacturing  plant  in 
downtown  Baltimore.  Thanks  to 
McCormick's  policy  of  recognizing 


and  developing  employee  potential 
and  of  promoting  from  within,  she 
rose  through  the  ranks  to  become 
vice  president,  human  relations  for 
McCormick.  In  this  position,  she 
oversees  the  human  relations  func- 
tion for  all  McCormick  operations  in 
the  U.S.  and  abroad. 

Weatherholtz  has  been  successful 
in  implementing  employee  benefits 
like  flex  time  and  job  sharing  and  in 
helping  employees  tap  their  poten- 
tial for  growth  because  McCormick 
shares  her  concern  for  something 
more  than  just  the  bottom  line.  The 
idea  is  to  work  together  for  a  com- 
mon goal  while  recognizing  the 
value  of  all  employees  as  individu- 
als. It  means  being  flexible  and  re- 
sponsive to  new  ideas,  new  technol- 
ogy, and  changing  employee  needs. 

Weatherholtz's  job  is  to  balance 
the  needs  of  employees  with  the 
needs  of  the  company.  One  of  her 
main  objectives  is  to  implement  a 
more  systematic  approach  to  em- 
ployee development  and  to  antici- 
pating and  planning  for  the  com- 
pany's future  job  needs.  "Ideally, 
we  want  to  aid  the  growth  of  people 
in  their  current  roles  and  help  pre- 
pare them  for  new  roles.  We're 
training  managers  to  act  as  coaches, 
so  they  will  be  able  to  help  their  em- 
ployees grow  in  the  business." 

What  is  the  key  to  McCormick's 
success,  and  what  makes  it  such  a 
great  place  to  work?  "Ours  is  a  pro- 
active, not  a  reactive  approach.  Our 
success  will  continue  to  be  based  on 
our  ability  to  satisfy  our  customers' 
needs  and  our  ability  to  focus  on  key 
goals,  while  fostering  a  caring  work 
environment." 


Grants  Support 
Financial  Aid, 
Renovation,  And 
Computing 

At  its  annual  luncheon  in  Novem- 
ber, the  Beneficial-Hodson  Trust 
awarded  Washington  College  a  grant 
of  $803,970.  This  gift  brings  the  total 
amount  awarded  to  the  College  from 
the  Trust  to  nearly  $17  million.  The 
Hodson  Trust  made  its  first  gift  to 
Washington  College  in  1936. 

A  major  portion  of  this  year's  gift  — 


$700,000  —  will  further  endow  the 
Beneficial-Hodson  Trust  Scholarship 
Fund  which  supports  four-year  merit- 
based  scholarships.  Approximately  20 
Beneficial-Hodson  Trust  Scholars  are 
selected  annually  by  the  Academic 
Scholarship  Committee.  Another 
$100,000  will  be  available  for  annual  fi- 
nancial aid  to  students.  The  remaining 
$3,970  will  be  used  to  purchase  a  new 
boat  for  the  sailing  program. 

A  second  grant  has  been  obtained  to 
help  support  the  cost  of  improvements 
to  Hodson  Hall.  The  William  G. 
Baker,  Jr.  Memorial  Fund  of  Baltimore 
awarded  Washington  College  $15,000 


to  be  used  for  renovation  of  the 
school's  student  union  building. 
Renovations  include  transformation  of 
the  old  College  Bookstore  into  a  Com- 
mon Room  and  reconstruction  of  the 
basement  area  into  a  Student  Activities 
Center  with  two  outdoor  terraces. 
Construction  for  phase  two  of  the 
project  is  set  to  begin  this  summer. 

The  William  Bingham  Foundation 
has  awarded  a  grant  for  academic 
computing.  The  Foundation's  gift  of 
$13,750  will  be  used  to  purchase  com- 
puter equipment  to  support  the 
Internet  system,  a  sophisticated  com- 
puting network  linking  college  and 


Washington  College  Magazine /  Spring  1993 


What's  On  The 

NlGHTSTAND? 

We  asked  members  of  the  psychology  de- 
partment if  they  had  read  a  good  book 
lately.  They  passed  along  the  following  sug- 
gestions: 

The  Discoverers,  by  Pulitzer-Prize  win- 
ning historian  Daniel  J.  Boorstin.  The 
book  traces  the  course  of  the  major  in- 
tellectual discoveries  in  the  history  of 
the  world:  what  matter  is,  how  the 
body  works,  how  the  new  world  was 
discovered,  and  how  telescopes  and 
microscopes  changed  the  world. 

—  George  Spilich,  Professor  and  Chair 

I  read  religious  books  for  recreation. 
Right  now  I  am  reading  Josh 
McDowell's  Evidence  that  Demands  a 
Verdict,  Volume  1.  The  essence  of  the 
book  is  Christian  apologetics;  supply- 
ing evidence  for  the  basic  tenents  of 
Christianity  through  historical  and  ar- 
chaeological documentation.  While 
faith  is  necessary  for  belief,  faith  can  be 
buttressed  with  facts,  and  that  is  the 
point  of  the  book.  I  just  finished  a  book 
by  John  MacArthur,  Jr.  entitled  Charis- 
matic Chaos.  The  focus  of  that  work  is 
an  examination  of  the  effect  of  the  char- 
ismatic moverment  on  Orthodox  Chris- 
tianity. These  readings,  and  others  like 
them,  help  me  focus  on  what  ulti- 
mately matters  in  my  life  and  the  life  of 
my  family. 

—  Jim  Siemen,  Associate  Professor 

I've  been  reading  the  latest  edition  of 
Awakenings  by  neurologist  Oliver 
Sacks.  Awakenings  chronicles  the  treat- 
ment of  patients  who  contracted 
"sleeping-sickness"  following  an  en- 
cephalitis epidemic  in  the  late  1940's. 
When  time  permits  I  read  a  bit  of  Sci  Fi 
and  a  chapter  or  two  in  a  new  text  on 
animal  communication  bv  Eugene 
Morton  &  Jake  Page  entitled,  Animal 
Talk:  Science  and  the  Voices  of  Nature. 
— Michael  Kerchner,  Assistant 
Professor 


university  mainframes  around  the 
globe.  Through  Internet,  students  and 
faculty  will  be  able  to  access  databases 
and  software  repositories  currently 
available  only  at  large  resource  univer- 
sities and  will  have  greater  opportuni- 
ties for  collaborative  work  through  the 
availability  of  rapid  communication 
with  scholars  at  other  institutions.  The 
Bingham  Foundation  has  been  sup- 
porting academic  computing  at  Wash- 
ington College  for  several  years. 

AIDS  Quilt  Brings 
New  Awareness  To 
Campus 

It's  hard  to  believe  that  pieces  of 
cloth  and  some  memorabilia  could 
be  so  powerful,"  Kathleen  O'Donnell 
'86  remarked  after  viewing  portions  of 
the  AIDS  quilt  on  display  in  the  Casey 
Academic  Center.  "I  really  wasn't  pre- 
pared to  be  so  moved  emotionally." 

O'Donnell's  reaction  was  typical  of 
the  hundreds  of  students,  faculty,  and 
administrators  who  passed  through 
the  Casey  lobby  in  early  December. 
Laid  out  before  them  were  tributes  to 
the  lives  of  people  who  had  died  from 
AIDS,  crafted  by  the  people  who  loved 
them. 

Two  parents  wrote  to  their  son  who 
died  at  age  27:  "Dear  Chris,  When  you 
left  our  hearts  went  with  you.  I  pray 
that  you  are  happy  and  free  from  suf- 
fering. . .  .  We  love  and  miss  you  so 
much."  Another  panel  featured 
Sesame  Street's  Big  Bird  character  on  a 


pink  background,  crafted  for 
"Mommy's  little  princess"  Christina, 
who  died  when  she  was  two.  The 
child's  mother,  who  died  a  short  time 
later,  has  a  panel  of  her  own. 

The  quilt,  brought  to  campus  for  Na- 
tional AIDS  Awareness  Week  by  Troy 
Petenbrink  '91,  an  administrative  assis- 
tant for  The  Names  Project  in  Wash- 
ington, D.C.,  and  Edward  Weissman, 
professor  of  political  science,  personal- 
ized the  threat  of  AIDS  for  many  stu- 
dents.   In  conjunction  with  the  quilt 
display,  Douglass  Rose  '86,  who  has 
tested  HIV-positive,  spoke  to  a  stand- 
ing-room-only crowd  of  students 
about  responsible  sexuality. 

Because  AIDS  is  a  constant  threat, 
students  on  campus  have  mobilized  an 
AIDS  awareness  program  that  will 
serve  students  throughout  the  aca- 
demic year.  Keith  Erickson,  a  junior 
history  major,  has  launched  a  Peer 
Education  Program  to  encourage  sexu- 
ally active  partners  to  use  condoms,  to 
let  people  know  how  HIV  is  and  isn't 
transmitted,  and  to  encourage  students 
to  be  tested  for  the  virus  regularlv. 

"By  the  middle  of  spring  semester, 
we  will  have  hit  all  the  dormitories 
with  our  AIDS  education  program," 
says  Keith.  "We  plan  to  install 
condom  machines  in  all  the  bathrooms 
on  campus,  and  we're  trying  to  either 
buy  or  have  donated  enough  condoms 
to  pass  out  on  campus." 

While  many  voung  people  mav  be- 
lieve themselves  to  be  invulnerable  to 
the  disease,  Erickson  savs  the  statistics 
are  shocking  enough  to  make  people 
think  again:  one  out  of  45  teenagers  in 
the  D.C.  area  is  HIV-positive,  he 
claims,  and  the  disease  is  spreading 
more  rapidly  among  heterosexuals 
than  among  homosexuals. 

"We're  trying  to  demystify  condoms 
and  their  use,  and  make  people  realize 
it's  a  matter  of  life  and  death,"  savs 
Erickson.  "What  scares  me  is  that  so 
many  students  have  the  wrong  infor- 
mation about  AIDS.  HIV  antibodies 
will  show  up  within  six  months  of  in- 
fection, but  there  is  a  latency  period  of 
about  eight  years  during  which  there 
are  no  symptoms.  One  and  a  half  mil- 
lion people  don't  know  thev  are  HIV- 
positive.  We're  encouraging  people  to 
be  tested  at  least  once  a  year." 


Students  and  faculty  were  moved  by 
panels  from  the  AIDS  Quilt  displayed  in 
the  Casey  Academic  Center. 


Washington  College  Magazine/S;>nii^  1993 


The  Litrentas  Earn 
Magna  Cum  Laude 
In  The  Sciences 

by  Martin  E.  Williams  '75 

What  do  the  employees  of 
Harley  Davidson  and  Allis 
Chalmers  have  in  common  with 
Washington  College's  science  divi- 
sion? All  have  been  touched  by  Dr. 
David  Litrenta  '58  and  his  partner 
and  wife  Shirley.  Having  distin- 
guished themselves  as  students, 
health  care  providers,  clinicians  and 
community  servants,  David  and 
Shirley  Litrenta  recently  crowned 
their  achievements  with  a  major  gift 
to  the  science  program  at  Washing- 
ton College  for  renovations  to  the 
lecture  room  in  Dunning  Hall. 

It  all  began  35  years  ago  when 
David  met  Shirley  in  high  school  in 
Dundalk,  Maryland,  and  began  to 
make  important  decisions.  David 
wanted  to  attend  college  to  study  ei- 
ther medicine,  dentistry,  or  law.  He 
and  Shirley  also  wanted  to  marry.  In 
his  senior  year  David  learned  from  a 
guidance  counselor  that  at  Washing- 
ton College,  in  a  place  called  Ches- 
tertown  on  Maryland's  Eastern 
Shore,  students  who  graduated  in 
the  sciences  were  assured  a  place  in 
medical  school. 

After  his  freshman  year  at  WC, 
Litrenta  decided  to  marry  Shirley 
and  by  the  following  year  they  were 
parents  of  a  baby  boy.  David  was 
not  only  doing  well  in  college,  he 
consistently  placed  at  the  top  of 
his  class.  He  was  also  a  member  of 
the  Phi  Sigma  Kappa  fraternity.  An- 
other child  was  born  in  his  junior 
year.  The  Litrentas  lived  at  a  board- 
ing house  on  Queen  Street,  and 
sometimes  with  David's  parents. 
Times  were  difficult,  yet  David  ex- 
celled in  his  studies. 

"I  decided  to  apply  to  the  Univer- 
sity of  Maryland  Medical  School  3-2 
program,"  David  said,  "which 
means  you  could  skip  your  senior 
year  of  college.  If  you  successfully 
completed  the  first  year  of  medical 
school  in  Baltimore,  Washington 
College  would  then  grant  you  a  bac- 
calaureate diploma.  So  far,  so  good. 
But  when  I  skipped  the  senior  year,  I 
lost  my  chance  forhonors.  A  magna 


cum  laude  degree  meant  a  great  deal  to 
me.  The  college  had  a  rule  —  you  had 
to  attend  your  senior  year.  I  could 
never  persuade  a  Dean  to  make  an  ex- 
ception for  me." 

He  spent  the  next  30  years  trying. 
During  that  time  he  also  began  a  fam- 
ily practice  at  York  Hospital,  became  a 
charter  Fellow  of  the  American  Acad- 
emy of  Family  Practice,  and  in  1965 
built  his  own  family  practice  medical 
building  in  York. 

In  1973  a  decision  to  become  the 
Medical  Director  for  Allis  Chalmers 
Corporation  in  York  was  the  genesis 
for  central  Pennsylvania's  largest  occu- 
pational health  and  safety  clinic.  David 
Litrenta  took  a  mini-residency  at  The 
University  of  Cincinnati  School  of  Oc- 
cupational Medicine.  There  were  ad- 
ditional courses  studying  significant 
areas  of  medicine,  law,  government 
regulation,  and  the  development  of  a 
large,  highly  trained  staff.  Today  the 
Litrentas'  York  Industrial  Medical 
Center  provides  critical  services  to 
thousands  of  workers.  Drug  testing  is 
a  high  volume  activity  at  the  Center,  as 
well  as  disability  review  case  work, 
immunization,  and  health  safety  pro- 
grams. Shirley  Litrenta  is  the  office 
manager  and  trouble  shooter.  Now  the 
proud  parents  of  seven  children  and 
eight  grandchildren,  the  Litrentas  look 
back  over  a  career  of  hard  work  and 
self-sacrifice  that  has  brought  them 
many  rewards. 

In  1990  David  and  Shirley  Litrenta 
renewed  their  connection  with  Wash- 


Dr.  David  Litrenta  '58  and  wife  Shirley. 


ington  College  when  David  was  ap- 
pointed by  President  Charles  Trout 
to  the  Visiting  Committee.  He 
served  on  a  sub-committee  called 
The  Washington  College  Friends  of 
the  Sciences.  One  of  the  early  meet- 
ings disclosed  the  College's  need  to 
prepare  today's  students  more  fullv 
for  the  rigors  of  medical  school  ap- 
plications, especially  the  interview 
process.  David  Litrenta  volunteered 
to  join  a  committee  of  faculty  mem- 
bers and  alumni  to  assist  students  in 
applying  to  medical  school.  This 
year,  all  Washington  College  gradu- 
ates who  applied  to  David's  alma 
mater,  The  University  of  Maryland 
Medical  School,  were  accepted. 

Another  area  of  critical  need  was 
the  lack  of  computerized  audio  vi- 
sual equipment  for  the  teaching  of 
science.  Audio  disk  technology  is  a 
key  ingredient  in  today's  teaching 
repertoire.  The  lecture  hall  in  Dun- 
ning had  no  such  equipment.  The 
room  itself  needed  refurbishing  . 
The  Litrenta  gift  will  permit  a  major 
renovation  of  the  lecture  hall,  includ- 
ing the  installation  of  sophisticated 
computer  technology.  In  recognition 
of  their  gift,  the  room  will  be  re- 
named the  Litrenta  Lecture  Hall. 

In  the  annals  of  stewardship  for 
Washington  College,  David  and 
Shirley  Litrenta  have  earned  magna 
cum  laude. 


Washington  College  Magazine  /Spring  1993 


British  Journal 
Publishes  Spilich's 
Smoking  Study 

George  Spilich,  professor  and  chair 
of  the  psychology  department,  is 
adding  fuel  to  the  fire  in  the  crusade 
against  smoking.  His  research  find- 
ings that  cigarette  smoking  hinders 
thought  processes  was  published  in 
the  British  Journal  of  Addiction  this  fall. 
Science  News  picked  up  the  story  in  its 
January  1993  issue. 

According  to  the  research  conducted 
at  Washington  College  by  Spilich  and 
his  students  during  the  past  several 
years,  cigarette  smoking  reduces  con- 
centration and  the  ability  to  remember. 
Drivers  may  be  more  prone  to  acci- 
dents and  pilots  may  make  crucial  er- 
rors of  judgment  under  sudden  stress, 
Spilich's  research  indicates. 

This  report,  co-authored  by  Spilich, 
Lorraine  June  '82  and  Judith  Renner 
'86,  contradicts  earlier  psychological 
studies  of  smokers  that  suggested  ciga- 
rettes improve  smokers'  abilitv  to 
think  and  concentrate.  This  report 
shows  that  tobacco  does  not  improve 
short-term  memory  and  actually  has 
adverse  effects  on  long-term  memory. 

Spilich  and  his  student  colleagues 
tested  288  students,  divided  into 
groups  of  non-smokers,  active  smokers 
who  had  just  smoked  before  perform- 
ing the  tasks,  and  deprived  smokers, 
who  refrained  from  smoking  for  three 
hours  before  the  tests. 

The  volunteer  subjects  read  a  pas- 


sage, then  had  to  recount  the  facts. 
The  findings  state:  "Cigarette  smoking 
was  related  to  decreased  performance 
on  a  text  comprehension  task,  possibly 
by  diminishing  the  ability  of  the 
smoker  to  deploy  processing  opera- 
tions selectively  to  capture  those 
events  which  were  central  to  the  task." 

In  driving  simulations,  smokers 
were  nearly  3.5  times  more  likely  to 
have  accidents  than  the  non-smckers, 
indicating  a  tobacco-induced  delayed 
reaction. 

"We  interpret  the  present  data  to  in- 
dicate that  sub-processes  such  as 
working  memory  or  attentional  capac- 
ity which  are  involved  in  dealing  with 
complex  tasks  are  disrupted  by  an 
agent  or  agents  in  cigarettes,  with  nico- 
tine itself  and /or  carboxyhemoglobin 
our  prime  suspects." 

Another  explanation  may  be  that 
long-term  smoking  affects  the  blood 
supply  to  areas  of  the  brain  that  pro- 
cess information.  Spilich,  who  also  has 
done  research  on  Alzheimer's  disease 
and  other  types  of  senile  dementia,  has 
been  invited  to  collaborate  with  a  Japa- 
nese traffic  safety  expert  to  examine 
how  elderly  drivers  who  smoke  are 
impaired. 

Spilich  and  his  students  are  now  in- 
vestigating how  brain  waves  may  be 
affected  by  smoking.  "Previous  stud- 
ies have  used  the  EEG  to  show  that 
smoking  positively  affects  perfor- 
mance of  simple  tasks,"  he  says.  "We 
believe  that  when  smokers  are  re- 
quired to  perform  more  complicated 
tasks,  that  won't  be  the  case." 

A  research  project  this  semester  is 


using  video  simulations  of  an  air  traf- 
fic controller's  screen,  which  can  be 
manipulated  to  add  more  planes  and 
thus,  more  complexity,  to  the  situation. 
Air  traffic  controllers,  who  have  one  of 
the  most  stressful  jobs  imaginable,  are 
notoriously  heavy  smokers,  Spilich 
says. 

While  the  psychology  department 
does  not  enjoy  the  funds  or  the  equip- 
ment that  the  tobacco  industry  devotes 
to  its  research  encouraging  people  to 
smoke,  Spilich  and  his  students  take 
more  time  and  care  compiling  their 
data,  he  says.    Spilich  hopes  to  add 
smokers  on  nicotine  transdermal 
patches  to  his  study  to  help  determine 
whether  the  culprit  for  loss  of  cogni- 
tive function  is  nicotine  or  carbon 
monoxide. 

Students  are  playing  a  key  role  in 
these  research  efforts.  Two  poster  pre- 
sentations prepared  by  student  re- 
searchers have  been  accepted  and  will 
be  delivered  at  the  Eastern  Psychologi- 
cal Association's  annual  meeting  in 
Crystal  City,  Virginia,  this  April. 

Students  Kristin  Coyne,  Tine  Welch, 
and  Valerie  Neidig  worked  with 
Spilich  to  examine  the  effects  of  ciga- 
rette smoking  on  short-term  memory. 
The  study  provides  evidence  that  nico- 
tine does  not  improve  cognitive  per- 
formance. 

Students  Jenny  An,  Kelly  Eakin, 
Aimee  Erhart,  and  Melissa 
Omohundro  conducted  a  study  of  the 
effects  of  smoking  upon  text  compre- 
hension. In  this  study,  smokers  and 
non-smokers  read  and  recalled  various 
short  stories.  While  smokers  recalled 
less  in  general  than  non-smokers,  the 
deficit  was  greatest  for  those  stories 
that  posed  the  greatest  memory  load. 

At  the  Association's  annual  meeting, 
Spilich  also  is  participating  in  a  sym- 
posium on  "New  Directions  in  To- 
bacco Research."  Fellow  speakers  in- 
clude Rich  Taylor  '87,  a  former  student 
of  Spilich's  who  is  now  a  researcher  at 
the  National  Institute  of  Drug  Addic- 
tion. 


Students  Dina  Sansing  (left)  and  Brigid 
Murray  do  their  part  to  add  visual  appeal 
to  the  Student  Center  in  Hodson  Hall 
while  awaiting  major  renovation. 
Representing  various  groups,  students 
painted  ceiling  tiles,  table  tops,  and  walk. 
WC  has  raised  $1.1  million  of  the 
$1,675,000  cost  of  the  renovation  project, 
chaired  by  trustee  Thomas  J.  Maher. 


Washington  College  Magazine/S/'ri?i£  1993 


Eric  Ruark  '71 
Pedals  Across 
America 

by  fay  Derbis  '95 

Having  just  returned  from  a 
4,700  mile  solo  bicycle  ride 
across  the  United  States,  Eric  Ruark 
'71  has  nearly  as  many  pictures  to 
develop  as  he  does  stories  about  the 
road.  Traveling  on  a  TREK  moun- 
tain bike  with  close  to  100  pounds  of 
photographic  and  camping  gear,  the 
freelance  photojournalist  rode  across 
the  South  and  Southwest,  often  en- 
during harsh  weather  and  using  out- 
of-the-way  roads  that  were  "the 
most  scenic  routes  but  in  some  cases 
were  so  bad  you  had  to  bike  stand- 
ing up  for  miles." 

Leaving  his  home  in  Southbury, 
Connecticut,  Ruark  traveled  through 
the  Delaware  Water  Gap,  the  Amish 
country  in  Pennsylvania,  down  the 
Blue  Ridge  in  Virginia,  across  east- 
ern Tennessee  where  he  camped 
near  Davy  Crockett's  cabin,  across 
Alabama,  down  the  Natchez  Trace 
in  Mississippi,  down  the  delta  to 
New  Orleans,  then  up  to  Texarkana 
and  Oklahoma. 

Taking  a  short  break  from  his 
journey,  Ruark  departed  Oklahoma 
and  flew  to  Key  West,  Florida,  to 
participate  in  the  Ernest 
Hemingway  Writer's  Conference 
and  Festival.  There  he  was  joined 
by  his  father,  Paul  Ruark  '43,  who 


i 


has  just  retired  after  teaching  foreign 
language  for  22  years  in  Connecticut 
schools.  While  there,  the  younger 
Ruark  won  the  festival's  story  telling 
contest  by  entertaining  the  crowd  with 
a  ghost  story  on  the  first  night  and  a 
bull  fighting  story  on  the  second  night. 
Ruark  credits  his  flair  for  creative 
storytelling  to  "all  those  hours  I  spent 
in  Tim  Maloney's  drama  classes  at 
Washington  College." 

Flying  back  to  Oklahoma,  Ruark 
picked  up  Route  66  and  followed  it 
across  the  Texas  panhandle,  New 
Mexico,  and  Arizona. 

In  California,  he  made  his  way 
across  the  Mojave  Desert  on  a  moon- 
less night,  riding  from  midnight  until 
noon  and  traveling  154  miles  non-stop, 
with  a  cellular  phone  as  his  only  link 
to  the  world.  A  few  days  later  his  trip 
ended  in  Los  Angeles,  where  he  was 
joined  by  his  father  and  his  mother, 
Ellen  Ruark  '45,  a  financial  consultant. 

"The  whole  trip  took  five  months," 
said  Eric  Ruark.  "It  was  the  kind  of 
adventure  that  you  dream  about.  The 
people  you  meet,  the  places  you  see, 
the  whole  experience  —  you  can't  get 
it  in  a  car  riding  on  an  interstate.  The 
sensory  details  that  you  see,  smell  and 
hear  make  you  feel  like  one  of  the  first 
explorers  crossing  the  land." 


(Left)  "Sometimes  you  follow  little  signs 
and  arrows  just  to  see  where  they  will  lead 
you.  Invariably  they  will  lead  you  to 
things  you  cannot  see  from  the  highway." 
Dingman  Falls,  Delaware  Water  Gap 
National  Park.  (Right)  Eric  Ruark  '71 
with  father  Paul  E.  Ruark  '43. 


"Only  a  mad  dog  or  I  would  ride  across 
a  desert  in  the  middle  of  August  on  a 
bicycle.  You  know  it  is  hot  when  the 
birds  come  down  and  stand  in  your 
shadow  to  get  out  of  the  sun. "  Painted 
Desert,  Arizona. 


Ruark,  a  former  newspaper  re- 
porter, is  nowpreparing  a  newsletter 
for  people  interested  in  bicycle  tour- 
ing. He  emphasizes  he  is  proof  that 
anyone  can  enjoy  bicycling.  At  six 
feet  tall  and  240  pounds,  "I'm  not  ex- 
actly your  Greg  Lamond  golden-boy 
type." 

Also  at  work  on  a  book  about  his 
adventures  entitled  Meditations  of  a 
Middle-Aged  Man  on  a  Bicycle,  Ruark 
has  joined  the  lecture  circuit.  He 
may  be  reached  at  (203)  264-1148. 


Washington  College  Magazine/ Spring  1993 


FAMILY      PORTRAITS 


Straight  From  The  Heart:  WC 
Sweethearts  Tell  Tales  Of  True  Love 


■  Sue  De  Pasquale  '87 


A  college  education  sometimes  yields  more  than 
students  bargain  for.  In  addition  to  a  liberal  arts 
education,  marketable  job  skills,  and  a  sense  of 
values,  many  students  also  find  a  soulmate  —  a 
person  with  whom,  sooner  or  later,  they  fall  in 
love  and  marry.  More  than  15  percent  of  Wash- 
ington College  alumni  are  married  to  other 
alumni.  In  honor  of  Valentine's  Day  and  the 
month  of  the  traditional  Birthday  Ball  in  which 
romances  are  made  or  broken,  the  Washington 
College  Magazine  asked  Sue  De  Pasquale  to  inter- 
view couples  whose  lives  together  started  at 
Washington  College. The  following  "love  stories" 
are  a  testament  to  the  power  of  fate. 


The  Tie  That  Binds 

Classmates  Walter  Brandt  '43  and 
Frances  "Babe"  Harris  '43  had  gone 
out  on  several  dates  together,  when 
one  day  she  invited  him  out  to  her 
family  farm  in  Quaker  Neck  to  go 
horseback  riding.  Walt,  a  self-de- 
scribed "city  boy"  from  Baltimore,  was 
nervous  about  the  idea.  When  Babe  led 
him  out  to  the  barn,  he  saw  his  anxietv 
was  justified.  "That  horse  was  hugel" 
he  says  today.  Once  the  two  had 
mounted  their  horses,  Babe  grabbed 
Walt's  lead  reins.  "She  said, "  We'll  just 
walk  along,  and  you'll  get  the  feel  of 
the  horse,'"  he  says.  "Then  all  of  a  sud- 
den, she  throws  me  the  reins  and  takes 
off  at  a  gallop.  My  horse  takes  off 
straight  back  for  the  barn,  and  I'm 
holding  on  like  you  wouldn't  imag- 
ine!" He  ended  up  in  a  heap  outside 
the  barn  door. 

"In  fact,"  he  says,  chuckling,  "Babe 
and  I  broke  up  shortly  after  that." 

There  weren't  any  hard  feelings, 
though.  During  their  sophomore  year, 
Babe  started  dating  Walt's  roommate 
and  good  friend,  Al  Dudderar  '42. 
Walt  struck  up  a  romance  with  Babe's 
close  friend,  Ann  Rouse  '43.  "Ann  and 
I  had  known  each  other  since  we  were 
little  girls,"  explains  Babe.  The  two 
couples  double-dated  and  spent  lots  of 
time  together.  Babe  and  Ann  were 
both  Alpha  Chi's.  Walt  and  Al  be- 
longed to  the  KA  fraternity  and  played 
on  the  College  football  team,  which  Al 
co-captained. 

They  were  golden  years,  filled  with 
dances,  picnics,  and  parties.  The  ter- 
rible specter  of  World  War  II  loomed 
large,  however.  Al  graduated  first  in 
the  spring  of  1942  and  went  right  into 
Officer  Candidate  School  (OCS).  He 
and  Babe  got  married  shortly  after  he 
completed  OCS  training,  and  Al  went 
overseas.  Walt  finished  up  at  Washing- 


Washington  College  Magazine/S;'rm£  2993 


(Top,  from  left  to  right)  Al  Dudderar  '42 
married  Frances  "Babe"  Harris  '43,  and 
Walt  Brandt  '43  married  Ann  Rouse  '43 
after  years  as  friends  and  sweethearts  at 
WC.  Years  later,  when  Walt  and  Babe 
(above)  both  lost  their  spouses  to  cancer, 
their  friendship  blossomed  into  romance. 


Washington  College  Magazine/Spring  2993 


ton  College  the  following  February, 
went  through  OCS,  and  married  Ann. 

After  the  war,  they  all  resumed  their 
friendship.  Both  Al  and  Walt  went  to 
work  for  C&P  Telephone.  Transfers 
kept  Walt  and  Ann  moving  every  two 
years  or  so,  while  Al  and  Babe  were 
more  stationary,  living  primarily  in  the 
Maryland  area.  "We  all  loved  Ocean 
City  and  we'd  get  together  every  sum- 
mertime," says  Walt.  "We'd  gather  up 
all  the  kids  and  go  to  Ocean  City  and 
have  a  big  two  weeks."  Babe  and  Ann 
antiqued  together,  and  Al  and  Walt 
were  avid  hunting  partners.  Walt  and 
Ann's  son,  Stephen,  loved  playing 
with  the  Dudderer  brood  of  five  chil- 
dren (including  Jody,  a  1977  Washing- 
ton College  graduate).  "The  kids  grew 
up  together  like  brothers  and  sisters," 
Walt  says. 

Then,  in  in  the  mid-1970s,  Al 
Dudderar  was  stricken  with  cancer.  He 
died  in  1976.  "Because  of  our  friend- 
ship," says  Walt,  "the  families  kept 
tabs  on  each  other."  Five  years  later, 
Ann  died  of  cancer  as  well.  Babe  and 
Walt  continued  to  stay  in  touch,  hav- 
ing lunch  together  whenever  Walt 
came  to  Chestertown  to  hunt.  Eventu- 
ally, they  decided  to  resume  the  rela- 
tionship begun  so  many  years  earlier. 
Walt  and  Babe  Brandt  were  married 
on  June  5, 1982. 

"It's  kind  of  like  a  fairy  tale  story," 
says  Babe. 

Today  they  live  in  a  sprawling  home 
outside  Chestertown  that  overlooks 
the  Chester  River.  The  house 
(equipped  with  a  "Washington  Col- 
lege" room  devoted  to  College  memo- 
rabilia) is  big  enough  to  accommodate 
their  far-flung  collection  of  children 
and  grandchildren,  all  of  whom  gath- 
ered to  celebrate  Thanksgiving  with 
them.  In  May,  the  Brandts  will  host  a 
party  celebrating  the  50th  Reunion  of 
the  Class  of  '43.  Co-chairs  of  the  Re- 
union planning  committee,  Walt  and 
Babe  have  been  busy  contacting  class- 
mates and  collecting  old  snapshots 
and  recollections  to  include  in  a  Re- 
union yearbook. 

Walt  leafs  through  a  stack  of  papers 
and  photos.  "Here's  Babe  and  Ann  at 
Primrose  Point,"  he  says,  pointing  to  a 
faded  snapshot.  The  two  girls  stand 
laughing,  their  arms  flung  around 
each  others'  shoulders,  eyes  fixed  on 
some  distant  point.  Tied  loosely 
around  their  waists  are  their  beaus' 
varsity  letter  sweaters.  Walt  says  they 
were  watching  Al  and  him  rough- 


house  at  a  picnic.  "The  girls  were  fun- 
loving,"  he  says,  smiling.  "In  fact,  ev- 
eryone we  hung  around  with  was  that 
way." 

"We  really  did  have  a  good  time," 
says  Babe.  "It  was  a  beautiful  four 
years." 

A  Shared  Calling 

Thomas  Edison's  birthday  will  al- 
ways have  special  meaning  for  Claire 
Pula  '78  and  Rev.  Carlos  Wilton  '78. 
The  two  began  dating,  as  sophomores, 
at  an  impromptu  party  to  celebrate  the 
little-known  event. 


At  the  time  they  started  daring, 
Carlos  had  just  begun  pondering  a  fu- 
ture in  the  ministry.  He  shared  his 
thoughts  with  Claire  during  a  week- 
end trip  to  Rehoboth.  "We  had  been 
going  together  a  few  weeks,"  she  re- 
calls, "and  I  asked  him  '  What  are  you 
planning  to  do  with  your  life?'  All  the 
normal  things  you  would  do  with  a 
philosophy  major  just  didn't  seem  to 
fit  Carlos.  As  soon  as  he  mentioned  the 
ministry,  I  said,  'That's  the  missing 
key!'" 

At  that  point,  Claire  was  a  practicing 
Catholic.  Sometimes  she  and  Carlos 


They  had  known  each  other  since 
the  third  day  of  freshman  year,  and 
had  been  in  several  classes  together. 
They  also  shared  a  common  group  of 
friends.  "Something  just  kind  of 
clicked  that  night,"  recalls  Carlos. 
"Once  we  started  seeing  each  other," 
says  Claire,  "our  friends  said,  "Well, 
it's  about  time!" 

Unfortunately,  both  had  already 
made  dates  with  other  people  for  the 
George  Washington  Birthday  Ball. 
"Both  our  dates  said,  'Why  don't  you 
two  go  together?'  but  we  said  no, 
we've  agreed  to  do  this,"  Claire  ex- 
plains. "We  didn't  want  to  let  them 
down."  Happily,  they  did  end  up  shar- 
ing a  few  dances  that  night. 

Today  the  couple  lives  in  Point 
Pleasant,  New  Jersey,  with  their  chil- 
dren, Benjamin,  8,  and  Anna,  3.  Carlos 
is  pastor  of  the  800-member  Point 
Pleasant  Presbyterian  Church,  and 
Claire  is  a  Presbyterian  chaplain  with  a 
hospice  program  for  terminally  ill  pa- 
tients and  their  families. 


"We  had  the  luxury  of 
getting  to  know  each 
other  first  as  friends, 
without  the  pressure  of 
dating  and  saying, 
*  Where  is  this  going?"' 

went  to  Catholic  mass  together;  other 
times  they  attended  various  Protestant 
churches  in  Chestertown.  They  spent 
their  junior  year  studying  abroad  in 
England,  he  in  the  Manchester  pro- 
gram, she  at  the  University  of  London. 
During  their  free  time  they  traveled 
across  Europe.  "That  year  abroad  was 
a  tremendous  growth  experience  for 
both  of  us,"  says  Claire,  a  history  ma- 
jor. "It  helped  deepen  the  bonds  be- 
tween us  a  lot."  Carlos  came  back 
more  resolved  than  ever  to  become  a 
minister. 


Washington  College  Magazine/S;)rai£  1993 


After  graduating  in  1978,  he  entered 
the  Princeton  Theological  Seminary. 
The  couple  got  married  two  years 
later.  Carlos'  training  included  a  year- 
long stint  in  Scotland  at  St.  Andrew's 
University,  where  Claire  also  took 
classes.  "That  was  my  last  hurrah  with 
history,"  she  says.  "I  realized  that  di- 
vinity was  what  I  was  heading  for,  and 
I  felt  very  clearly  that  it  should  be  the 
Presbyterian  ministry." 

She  began  working  on  a  master's  in 
divinity  degree  (M.Div.)  at  Princeton 
Theological  Seminary,  and  completed 
it  in  Iowa  at  the  University  of 
Dubuque  Theological  Seminary,  where 
Carlos  became  director  of  admissions 
once  he'd  earned  his  M.Div.  "I  was  his 
first  recruit,"  says  Claire.  Carlos  says 
he  enjoyed  the  six  years  he  spent  coun- 
seling prospective  students  about  their 
"sense  of  call"  to  the  ministry.  "Many 
were  second-career  students  making 


mid-life  changes."  The  time  in 
Dubuque  also  "worked  out  well  with 
Claire's  plan  to  continue  her  education 
in  the  ministry,"  he  says. 

The  family  moved  back  East  in  1990, 
in  part  to  be  closer  to  their  families,  in 
part  so  that  Carlos  could  pursue  a  call- 
ing to  parish  life.  Within  a  short  time 
Claire  was  ordained  for  her  work  with 
the  hospice  program. 

Now  married  more  than  12  years, 
Claire  and  Carlos  say  they  are  grateful 
to  have  met  in  a  small  college  setting. 
Says  Claire,  "We  had  the  luxury  of  get- 
ting to  know  each  other  first  as  friends, 
without  the  pressure  of  dating  and 
saying,  "Where  is  this  going?'" 

A  Golden  Anniversary 

Last  November,  Fred  and  Hilda 
Micari  gathered  with  friends  and  rela- 
tives at  the  Engineering  Society  Club 
in  midtown  Baltimore  to  celebrate  a 
marital  mile- 
stone few 
couples  ever 
reach:  their  50th 
wedding  anni- 
versary. 


"The  50  years  have  not 
all  been  a  bed  of  roses," 
concedes  Hilda  '38.  "But 
when  we  got  married,  we 
expected  to  stay  married. 
We  were  seriously 
committed  to  it." 


(Opposite)  Carlos  Wilton  '78  and  Clare 
Pula  '78,  with  children  Benjamin,  8,  and 
Anna,  3,  met  as  freshmen,  started  dating 
as  sophomores,  and  grew  close  during 
their  junior  year  abroad  together.  (Above) 
Hilda  '38  and  Fred  Micari  '40,  met  as 
freshmen  during  the  Depression  and  have 
stayed  together  for  more  than  fifty  years. 


"The  50  years 
have  not  all 
been  a  bed  of 
roses,"  concedes 
Hilda  '38.  "But 
when  we  got 
married,  we  ex- 
pected to  stay 
married.  We 
were  seriously 
committed  to 
it."  Her  husband 
agrees.  "Marriage  is  a  two-way  street," 
observes  Fred  '40.  "Sometimes  it's  60/ 
40.  You  have  to  give  and  take." 

Money  was  scarce,  the  country 
mired  in  Depression,  when  the  two 
teenagers  started  their  freshman  year 
at  Washington  College  in  the  mid- 
19303.  "We  made  our  own  fun,"  says 


PHOTO:  MICHAEL  CIESIF.LSKI 


Hilda.  Autumn  brought  football 
games,  pep  rallies,  bonfires,  and  'coon 
hunts.  In  the  winter  there  was  sled- 
ding and  ice-skating  at  a  nearby  pond. 
And  dances  were  a  popular  social 
event  throughout  the  year.  "We  had 
two-and-a-half  times  as  many  men  as 
girls,"  says  Hilda,  grinning.  In  fact,  it 
was  at  a  dance  that  she  and  Fred  first 
met. 

"I  was  attracted  to  him  because  he 
was  always  so  polite  and  thoughtful. 
That's  unusual,"  says  Hilda.  And 
would  Fred  describe  the  young 
woman  he  fell  in  love  with?  "She  was 
very  blond.  And  she  had  a  good  fig- 
ure. Let's  just  say  she  didn't  put  on 
any  weight,"  he  says. 

The  two  started  together  as  fresh- 
men, but  Fred  had  to  take  time  off 
from  college  to  earn  money  for  tuition. 
(Though  in-state  students  like  Balti- 
more-born Hilda  could  attend  tuition 
free  at  that  point,  out-of-staters  like 
Fred,  from  Connecticut,  were  charged 
$50  per  semester,  he  explains.)  As  a  re- 
sult of  his  time  away  from  college, 
Fred  took  two  years  longer  than  Hilda 
to  earn  his  degree.  Even  while  he  was 
in  school,  the  busi- 
ness administra- 
tion major  had  to 
hold  down  several 
jobs. 

"I  never  had  the 
pleasure  of  sitting 
with  Hilda  at  bas- 
ketball games  be- 
cause I  ran  the 
manual  score- 
board," he  ex- 
plains. The  games 
(against  such  rivals 
as  Johns  Hopkins  and  University  of 
Delaware)  were  held  at  the  local  Ar- 
mory, and  Fred  earned  40  cents  an 
hour  for  his  efforts.  "If  you  made  a 
mistake,  the  crowd  really  got  on  us," 
he  says.  After  the  game,  he  and  Hilda 
sometimes  met  up  at  Gill's  in  Chester- 
town  for  an  ice  cream  or  soda. 

On  campus,  Fred  manned  the  recre- 
ation center,  located  in  the  basement  of 
what,  today,  is  Hodson  Hall.  "There 
were  two  pool  tables  and  I  had  some 
experience  playing  pool,  so  I  was  more 
or  less  the  caretaker,"  he  recalls. 
"We'd  charge  10  cents  a  cue,  for  half 
an  hour."  Hilda  often  dropped  by  to 
keep  him  company  and  would  shoot  a 
few  rounds  of  pool  herself. 

Once  she  had  earned  her  degree  in 
English  and  social  studies  in  the  spring 


Washington  College  Magazine  /Spring  1993 


13 


of  1938,  Hilda  went  to  work  for  the  De- 
partment of  Public  Welfare  in  Balti- 
more City. 

Over  the  next  two  years  she  traveled 
to  Chestertown  nearly  every  weekend 
to  visit  Fred.  She  made  the  trip  with 
classmate  Polly  Taylor  Horner 
'38,  who  was  journeying  back 
to  visit  her  own  beau  and  fu- 
ture husband,  Joshua  Horner 
'40. 

These  were  the  days  before 
the  advent  of  the  Chesapeake 
Bay  Bridge;  their  trip  often  in- 
volved waiting  several  hours 
to  take  the  ferry  to  Tolchester, 
then  catching  a  ride  to  Ches- 
tertown. "Polly  and  I  would 
always  have  to  have  new  out- 
fits to  wear  every  weekend," 
she  says.  Being  an  AOn  (Fred 
was  a  Lambda),  Hilda  had  an 
open  invitation  to  stay  with 
one  of  her  sorority  sisters  in 
Reid  Hall. 

The  Micaris  were  married 
on  November  30, 1942,  in  Bal- 
timore. They  decided  to  settle 
there. 

"I  persuaded  him  that  this 
was  the  land  of  pleasant  liv- 
ing," says  Hilda.  She  became  an  execu- 
tive with  Western  Electric  Bell  Sys- 
tems, where  she  specialized  in  college 
relations  and  education  programs  in  a 
career  that  spanned  40  years.  Fred  pur- 
sued a  long  and  successful  career  as  a 
senior  contract  administrator  with  the 
Bendix  Corporation. 

Now  retired  and  living  in  Towson, 
Maryland,  the  couple  spend  their  time 
playing  bridge,  going  to  concerts  and 
plays,  traveling,  and  watching  sports 
events.  Both  say  they  feel  extremely 
fortunate  to  have  passed  five  decades 
in  the  company  of  one  another.  The 
key  to  their  marital  longevity,  says 
Hilda,  is  simple:  "Communication. 
Love.  Having  mutual  interests,  good 
friends,  and  high  morals.  And  relying 
on  God." 

Two  Generations 

When  Van  '60  and  Eva  Conway  '60 
get  to  reminiscing  about  their  days  at 
Washington  College,  their  son  Carle 
and  his  wife  Sarah  have  no  difficulty 
envisioning  the  classrooms  in  Bill 
Smith  Hall,  or  recalling  the  luxurious 
shade  of  the  Elm:  Carle  and  Sarah  are 
themselves  alumni  of  Washington  Col- 
lege, having  graduated  in  1985. 

Unlike  their  parents,  who  met  in  col- 


lege, Carle  and  Sarah  began  dating  in 
high  school  when  they  were  both  at- 
tending the  Key  School  in  Annapolis. 
By  the  time  they  started  their  freshman 
year  their  relationship  was  firmly  es- 
tablished. "Instead  of  dating  being  a 


away  from  him  that  very  first  day. 
"She  took  one  look  at  me  and  said, 
'Don't  get  involved  with  any  of  those 
foreign  students;  he  looks  foreign  to 
me,"  says  Van,  chuckling.  "She  also 
said,  'I  think  he's  too  old  for  you/"  re- 


destabilizing  factor,  for  us  it  was  a  sta- 
bilizing factor,"  says  Sarah,  who  ma- 
jored in  international  studies.  "Being 
in  a  serious  relationship,  we  didn't 
have  to  play  the  same  kind  of  games 
that  our  friends  were  playing,"  she 
adds. 

Though  Carle  was  a  business  major, 
the  two  did  take  some  classes  together. 
"We  had  been  lab  partners  in  high 
school,"  he  says,  "so  when  we  got  to 
college,  we  did  all  the  labs  together." 
The  two  were  married  in  1987  and  to- 
day live  in  Annapolis.  Carle  is  an  ad- 
ministrator at  a  school  that  teaches  En- 
glish to  Japanese  students;  Sarah 
works  with  a  printing  firm. 

The  elder  Conways  didn't  wait  until 
graduation  to  tie  the  knot.  They  were 
married  over  Thanksgiving  Break  of 
their  junior  year — just  as  Eva's  mother 
had  feared  when  she  first  set  eyes  on 
her  future  son-in-law.  Van  relates  the 
story  with  obvious  relish.  It  seems  that 
Eva's  parents  were  helping  her  unload 
her  bags  behind  William  Smith  Hall 
when  Van  pulled  up  in  his  Porsche 
and  hopped  out.  He  was  four  years 
older,  attending  college  on  the  GI  bill. 
And  he  had  long  hair. 

Van  found  out  later  that  Eva's  Scot- 
tish-born mother  warned  her  daughter 


"The  professor  took  it  as 
a  real  offense  that  a 
couple  could  come  into 
class  late,  with  smiles  on 
our  faces." 

calls  Eva.  Undeterred,  Eva  and  Van  be- 
gan dating  as  sophomores  and  were 
husband  and  wife  within  a  year.  They 
settled  in  a  beachfront  house  out  in 
Rolph's  Wharf.  During  their  senior 
year,  their  first  child,  Victoria,  was 
born. 

Their  family  status  did  not  prevent 
the  Conways  from  having  a  social  life. 
"Once  we  were  married,  then  we  were 
respectable  people  to  visit,"  says  Van. 
"We  had  a  lot  of  parties  out  at  our 
house." 

"Vicki  was  pretty  much  incorpo- 
rated into  them,"  adds  Eva.  Sometimes 
the  baby  even  accompanied  her 
mother  to  class. 

Like  most  college  students,  Van  and 
Eva  Conway  were  sometimes  late  for 
class.  "Our  worst  class  was  an  8  a.m. 
political  science  course  that  we  took  to- 
gether," Van  recalls.  "We  were  never 


Washington  College  Magazine /  Spring  1993 


on  time.  The  professor  took  it  as  a  real 
offense  that  a  couple  could  come  into 
class  late,  with  smiles  on  our  faces." 

A  Passion  For  Antiques 

Frank  Rhodes,  Jr.  '83  and  Holly 
Ferguson  '83  were  juniors  when  they 
met  at  an  off-campus  party  on  an  au- 
tumn night  in  1981.  Surprisingly 
enough,  says  Frank,  their  paths  had 
never  crossed;  at  a  school  of  only  700 
students,  neither  remembered  having 
seen  one  another  before. 

The  evening's  second  surprise  came 
when  they  started  chatting  and  discov- 


antiques  dealers,  and  she  had  grown 
up  in  the  business. 

Once  the  two  began  talking  she 
learned  that  Frank,  a  Lambda  Chi  from 
Pennsylvania,  had  frequently  visited 
his  grandparents,  Colonel  Edgar  Will- 
iam and  Bernice  Chrysler  Garbisch, 
when  he  was  a  child.  "Frank's  grand- 
parents had  a  beautiful  collection  of 
antiques  and  art,"  Holly  learned.  After 
their  deaths,  the  2,500  paintings  in 
their  art  collection  were  donated  to 
museums  all  over  the  world.  Their  an- 
tiques (including  dozens  of  William 
and  Mary,  Queen  Anne,  Chippendale, 
and  Hepplewhite 
pieces)  were  auc- 
tioned at  Soth- 
eby's in  1980;  "It 
was  the  largest 


"He's  a  perfectionist," 
says  Holly.  "He  puts 
himself  into  every 
piece. "  When  it  comes 
time  to  ship  a  finished 
piece  out  to  the 
customer,  Frank  often 
accompanies  it. 


(Opposite)  The  Conways,Van  '60  and  Eva 
'60  and  son  Carle  '85,  represent  two 
generations  of  alumni  romance.  Holly  '83 
and  Frank  Rhodes  '83,  with  daughter, 
Molly,  share  a  love  of  fine  furniture.  Frank 
handcrafted  the  chest  and  chair. 


ered  that  they  shared  a  mutual  passion 
for  antiques.  "Most  of  the  people  I  had 
dated  in  the  past  didn't  share  that  in- 
terest," says  Holly,  a  Chestertown  na- 
tive who  at  that  point  was  "dabbling" 
in  the  purchase  and  sale  of  antique  fur- 
niture. Her  father  and  uncle  were  both 


auction  of  an- 
tiques in  the 
country  at  that 
time,"  Holly  says. 
From  that  first 
meeting  on,  Frank 
and  Holly  were 
pretty  much  in- 
separable. They 
spent  their  week- 
ends visiting  flea 
markets  and  an- 
tique shops,  and  Holly  and  her  father 
taught  Frank  to  refinish  furniture. 
"The  first  piece  we  did  together  was  a 
tiger  maple  table  that  had  been 
painted  black,"  says  Holly.  "It  was  a 
great  piece  to  start  with,  because  once 
the  black  was  removed,  you  saw  the 
beautiful  wood.  Frank  got  real  ex- 
cited," she  recalls.  "He  loved  working 
with  his  hands." 

The  following  December,  right  after 
their  last  exam,  Frank  presented  Holly 
with  a  birthday  present:  an  antique  ti- 
ger maple  chest  he  had  refinished  him- 
self. That  same  night  he  asked  her  to 


marry  him.  She  happily  accepted,  and 
they  set  the  date  for  June. 

They  also  made  plans  to  go  into 
business  together.  Frank  had  discov- 
ered a  natural  talent  for  cabinetmaking 
and  had  grown  adept  at  reproducing 
the  fine  pieces  of  his  grandparents'  col- 
lection. These  works,  which  have  be- 
come known  as  The  Garbisch  Collec- 
tion, formed  the  basis  for  "Rhodes, 
Unique  Gifts  and  Collectibles,"  located 
today  on  High  Street  in  Chestertown. 
Holly  oversees  Rhodes,  "a  specialty 
department  store"  that  provides  inte- 
rior design  services  and  offers  every- 
thing from  reproduction  prints  to  "bin- 
ocular flasks"  made  of  pewter.  Much 
of  the  store's  floor  space  is  devoted  to 
displaying  furniture  Frank  has  hand- 
crafted —  reproduction  Chippendale 
sofas,  Queen  Anne 
wing  chairs,  Porringer 
top  tea  tables  —  in  his 
workshop  in  Queen 
Anne's  County- 
Over  the  years,  the 
Garbisch  Collection 
has  become  increas- 
ingly sought  after. 
Some  pieces  go  for  as 
much  as  $17,000,  and 
by  Frank's  estimate, 
require  more  than  550 
hours  of  work.  "He's  a 
perfectionist,"  says 
Holly.  "He  puts  him- 
self into  every  piece."  When  it  comes 
time  to  ship  a  finished  piece  out  to  the 
customer,  Frank  often  accompanies  it. 
"If  I  have  a  very  nice  piece  of  furni- 
ture, and  I've  spent  a  lot  of  time  mak- 
ing it  by  hand,  I  like  to  drive  the  400  or 
600  miles  and  deliver  it  personally,"  he 
explains. 

Frank  is  about  to  start  work  on  a 
piece  of  furniture  for  WC  that  will  be 
fashioned  from  a  piece  of  the  mighty 
elm,  lost  to  disease  in  1991.  He  doesn't 
want  to  divulge  what  he'll  be  making, 
however,  in  case  he  changes  his  mind. 
The  business  keeps  both  Holly  and 
Frank  Rhodes  busy,  as  does  their 
young  daughter,  Molly  Madeline,  who 
celebrates  her  first  birthday  in  Febru- 
ary. "We  take  Molly  with  us  when  we 
go  visiting  antique  shops,"  says  Holly. 
"That's  something  that  we'll  always 
have  to  share  together." 

Sue  Dc  Pasquale,  a  frequent  contributor  to 
the  Washington  College  Magazine,  met 
her  husband,  John  Musachio,  at  Washing- 
ton College. 


Washington  College  Magazine  /Spring  1993 


FACULTY      RESEARCH 


Studying  The  Lives  Of  Medieval 
Women 


by  Emilie  Ami 


In  1322,  the  medical  faculty  of  the  University 
of  Paris  brought  suit  against  a  Parisian  woman, 
Jacoba  Felicie,  for  practicing  medicine  without 
the  university's  license.  The  transcript  of  Jacoba's 
trial  gives  us  a  detailed  picture  of  her  activities,  of 
the  ailments  of  her  patients,  both  male  and  fe- 
male, and  of  the  medical  practices  and  attitudes 
of  the  time.  Jacoba  herself,  who  was  about  thirty 
years  old,  argued  that  she  was  "experienced  in 
the  art  of  medicine  and  learned  in  the  precepts  of 
that  art,"  and  that  "it  is  better  and  more  suitable 
and  proper  that  a  woman  wise  and  experienced 
in  the  art  should  visit  sick  women,  and  that  she 
should  examine  them  and  inquire  into  the  secrets 
of  nature  and  its  hidden  things,  than  that  a  man 
should  do  so. ..."  Her  patients  testified  that  she 
had  been  able  to  cure  them  when  other  physi- 
cians had  given  them  up  for  dead. 


Readings  like  this  trial  transcript, 
written  at  the  time  of  the  events  they 
describe,  or  by  participants  in  those 
events,  are  what  historians  call 
"sources"  or  "primary  sources."  When- 
ever I  teach  a  history  course,  I  try  to  in- 
clude this  kind  of  material  in  the  sylla- 
bus. Primary  sources  are  the  evidence 
upon  which  our  picture  of  the  past  is 
built;  from  them,  students  learn  how 
we  know  what  we  know  about  history. 
Sources  also  have  an  immediacy  and 
vividness  that  no  modern  work  can  re- 
ally provide.  But  when  I  started  teach- 
ing a  course  on  medieval  women  about 
six  years  ago,  I  found  very  little  mate- 
rial of  this  kind  in  a  format  accessible 
to  undergraduates. 

The  history  of  medieval  women  is  a 
field  that  has  exploded  in  the  past  ten 
to  twenty  years.  Large  numbers  of 
books  and  articles  have  been  published 
on  the  status,  activities  and  conditions 
of  women  in  the  thousand  years  we 
call  the  Middle  Ages  (from  the  fifth  to 
the  fifteenth  century),  and  new  re- 
search continues  to  appear  at  a  great 
rate.1  Clearly  there  is  abundant  evi- 
dence available  to  scholars.  But  only  a 
very  limited  range  of  primary  sources, 
mainly  the  works  of  female  mystics 
and  poets,  was  available  in  print  in  En- 
glish. To  my  surprise,  no  one  had  pub- 
lished a  handy  collection  of  translated 
historical  sources  by  and  about  ordi- 
nary women  in  the  Middle  Ages. 

So  I  decided  to  write  the  book  that 
my  students  and  I  needed.  Or,  more 
accurately,  to  edit  it.:  This  was  to  prove 
far  more  complicated  than  I  imagined 
when  I  blithely  announced  mv  inten- 
tions. The  biggest  tasks  were  locating 
and  selecting  suitable  translated 
sources  (or  in  some  cases  translating 
them  myself)  and  obtaining  permission 
to  reprint  them  from  the  copyright 
holders  (including  a  mysteriously  dis- 


Washington  College  Magazine/Sprm^  2993 


L 

!  V  E  S    I  X 

M  E  D I E  VA  L 

E 

UROPEW 

A    v 

SOURCEBOOK 

W 

E  1)  I  T  E  I)    Bvl 

A  M  T 


1 


■ 


Cover  illustration  and  Venetian  Sumptuary  Laws  reprinted  with  permission  of  Routledge,  1992. 


Washington  College  Magazine /  Spring  1993 


appearing  medical  doctor;  a  scholar  in 
Sweden  who,  fortunately,  understood 
English;  and  Her  Britannic  Majesty's 
Stationery  Office). 

In  the  process  I've  become  ac- 
quainted with  a  wonderful  variety  of 
individuals  from  all  walks  of  medieval 
life.  Their  stories  are  revealed  in  per- 
sonal narratives,  laws,  wills,  legal  in- 
struments, court  records,  works  of  the- 
ology, manuals  of  advice,  letters,  lit- 
urgy, ecclesiastical  documents,  histori- 
cal accounts,  and  even  archaeological 
remains.  The  picture  that  emerges  of 
life  in  medieval  Europe  is  a  much  more 
complex  one  than  we  often  imagine, 
and  the  attitudes  expressed  by  medi- 
eval people  can  be  both  very  alien  to 
our  way  of  thinking  and  startlingly  fa- 
miliar. 

Take,  for  example,  the  area  of  mar- 
riage and  family  relations.  The  vast  ma- 
jority of  medieval  marriages  (at  least 
first  marriages)  were  arranged  by  par- 
ents, and  historians  often  speak  of  mar- 
riage as  primarily  a  business  arrange- 
ment. But  behind  such  generalizations 
lie  a  wide  variety  of  real  human  experi- 
ences. For  example,  Christina  of 
Markyate,  a  twelfth-century  English 
girl,  vowed  herself  to  celibacy  and 
firmly  rejected  not  only  the  husband 
her  parents  had  chosen  but  marriage  it- 
self. According  to  her  biographer,  her 
parents  "brought  her  gifts  and  made 
great  promises:  she  brushed  them 
aside.  They  cajoled  her;  they  threatened 
her;  but  she  would  not  yield.  At  last 
they  persuaded  one  of  her  close  friends 
and  inseparable  companions,  named 
Helisen,  to  soothe  her  ears  by  a  con- 
tinuous stream  of  flattery,  so  that  it 
would  arouse  in  her,  by  its  very  persis- 
tence, a  desire  to  become  the  mistress 
of  a  house."  We  might  well  expect 
churchmen,  at  least,  to  support 
Christina's  determination  to  dedicate 
her  life  to  God,  but  instead  she  found 
herself  roundly  rebuked  by  the  local 
bishop  for  her  disobedience  to  her  par- 
ents and  her  implied  disrespect  for  the 
sacrament  of  marriage.  He  also  found 
her  motives  suspect:  "Perhaps  you  are 
rejecting  marriage  with  Burthred  in  or- 
der to  enter  a  more  wealthy  one?" 

Most  women,  of  course,  did  marry, 
and  their  expectations  of  marriage 
were  both  pragmatic  and  optimistic. 
One  thirteenth-century  English  writer 
summarized  a  typical  young  woman's 
attitude  toward  marriage  as  follows:  ". 
. .  a  man's  vigour  is  worth  much,  and  I 
need  his  help  for  maintenance  and 


food;  of  a  woman's  and  man's  copula- 
tion, worldly  welfare  arises,  and  a 
progeny  of  fair  children,  that  give 
much  joy  to  their  parents.  .  .  .  [A]  wife 
hath  much  comfort  of  her  husband, 
when  they  are  well  consorted,  and 
each  is  well  content  with  the  other." 
Even  in  arranged  marriages  the  rela- 
tions between  husband  and  wife  were 
expected  to  be  close  and  tender.  An 
anonymous  author  known  as  the 
Householder  of  Paris  wrote  to  his 
young  wife  (she  was  fifteen  when  they 
married)  that  a  hard-working  man  "is 
upheld  by  the  hope  which  he  has  of  the 


care  which  his  wife  will  take  of  him  on 
his  return,  and  of  the  ease,  the  joys  and 
the  pleasures  which  she  will  do  to  him, 
...  to  be  given  good  food  and  drink,  to 
be  well  served  and  well  looked  after, 
well  bedded  in  white  sheets  and  night- 
caps, well  covered  with  good  furs,  and 
assuaged  with  other  joys  and  amuse- 
ments, intimacies,  loves  and  secrets 
whereof  I  am  silent.  And  the  next  day 
fresh  shirts  and  garments." 

As  for  the  "progeny  of  fair  children," 
there  is  a  common  belief  today  that  in 
pre-modern  periods  childhood  was 
barely  recognized  as  a  distinct  phase  of 
life,  and  that  parents  could  ill  afford  to 
lavish  affection  on  their  children,  given 
the  high  infant  mortality  rate.  But  the 
sources  show  us  (and  medieval  histori- 
ans generally  recognize)  that  it  was  ut- 
terly normal  for  parents  to  love  their 
children  deeply.  We  have  a  remarkable 
work  written  by  a  ninth-century  noble- 
woman named  Dhuoda  for  her  son, 
from  whom  she  had  for  some  reason 
been  separated  by  her  husband:  "I  am 
well  aware  that  most  women  rejoice 
that  they  are  with  their  children  in  this 
world,  but  I,  Dhuoda  am  far  away 
from  you,  my  son  William.  For  this 
reason  I  am  anxious  and  filled  with 
longing  to  do  something  for  you."  The 
thirteenth-century  writer  quoted  above 
tried  to  persuade  women  to  remain 
celibate  on  the  grounds  that  mother- 


hood left  them  too  vulnerable  to  worry 
and  even  tragedy:  "As  soon  as  [a  child] 
appears  in  this  life,  it  bringeth  with  it 
more  care  than  joy,  specially  to  its 
mother;  for  .  .  .  if  it  is  wellshapen  and 
seemeth  likely  to  live,  a  fear  of  the  loss 
of  it  is  instantly  born  along  with  it;  for 
she  is  never  without  fear  lest  it  go 
wrong,  till  one  or  other  of  the  two  lose 
the  other."  And  Guibert  de  Nogent,  a 
twelfth-century  French  abbot,  no  doubt 
reflected  a  widely-held  attitude  in  his 
memoirs,  noting  that  when  his  wid- 
owed mother  retired  to  a  monastery, 
"there  was  none  to  give  me  the  loving 
care  a  little  child  needs  at  such  an  age 
[and]  that  only  a  woman  can  provide." 

Besides  family  members,  medieval 
households  at  almost  any  level  of  soci- 
ety often  included  servants,  and  poorer 
women  often  found  employment  as 
maidservants.  The  household  account 
books  of  Alice  de  Bryene,  a  widowed 
fifteenth-century  gentlewoman,  listed  a 
"lady's  maid  and  chamberlain,  squires, 
chaplains,  grooms,  clerks  of  the  chapel 
and  boys"  among  her  staff.  Occasion- 
ally we  find  descriptions  of  the  work 
and  proper  treatment  of  various  kinds 
of  maidservants  in  manuals  of  estate  or 
household  management.  Among  other 
duties,  a  thirteenth-centurv  dairymaid 
was  supposed  to  "receive  milk,  against 
a  tally,  by  the  number  of  gallons,  and  to 
make  cheese  and  butter,  and  to  take 
charge  of  the  poultry,  and  frequently  to 
render  account  and  to  answer  to  the 
bailiff  and  the  reeve  for  the  produce  re- 
sulting therefrom. .  .  ."  Younger  ser- 
vants, in  particular,  were  the  responsi- 
bility of  the  woman  of  the  house.  The 
Householder  of  Paris  advised  his  wife 
"that  if  you  have  girls  or  chamber- 
maids of  fifteen  to  twentv  years,  since 
they  are  foolish  at  that  age  and  have 
seen  nothing  of  the  world,  have  them 
sleep  near  you,  in  a  closet  or  chamber, 
where  there  is  no  dormer  window  or 
low  window  looking  onto  the  road, 
and  ...  if  one  of  your  servants  falls  ill, 
lay  all  your  concerns  aside,  and  take 
care  of  him  yourself  full  lovingly  and 
kindly,  and  visit  him  and  think  of  him 
or  her  very  carefully,  seeking  to  bring 
about  his  cure."  Not  all  employers 
treated  servants  so  benignly.  At  the 
other  extreme,  Leonor  Lopez,  a  fif- 
teenth-century Spanish  noblewoman, 
mentions  in  her  memoirs  a  dispute  in 
which  her  aunt's  servants  became  in- 
volved: ".  .  .  maids  of  hers  had  turned 
her  against  me,  so  that  she  would  not 
do  [what  I  had  asked],  and  I  was  so  dis- 


Washington  College  Magazine  /Spring  1993 


consolate  I  lost  my  patience,  and  the 
one  who  had  most  set  my  lady  aunt 
against  me  died  in  my  hands,  swallow- 
ing her  tongue." 

Such  detailed  and  personal  informa- 
tion about  medieval  people  is  the  ex- 
ception rather  than  the  rule,  and  for  the 
lower  ranks  of  society,  in  particular,  we 
must  rely  on  more  fragmentary  evi- 
dence. Some  fascinating  research  on 
English  peasant  families  has  been 
based  on  legal  records  such  as  the  coro- 
ners' rolls,  which  include  detailed  ac- 
counts of  the  circumstances  surround- 
ing unexpected  deaths.'  These  brief 
narratives  give  us  glimpses  of  home 
life,  work  and  even  recreational  activi- 
ties: "On  14  Jan.  1267  Sabillia,  an  old 
woman,  went  into  Colmworth  to  beg 
bread.  At  twilight  she  wished  to  go  to 
her  house,  fell  into  a  stream  and 
drowned  by  misadventure.  The  next 
day  her  son  Henry  searched  for  her 
[and]  found  her  drowned.  .  .  ."  In  es- 
tate surveys  we  find  records  of  the 
landholdings  and  legal  obligations  of 
individual  peasant  women  (usually 
widowed)  who  lived  and  farmed  land 
on  their  own —  under  medieval  law, 
widows  enjoyed  a  high  degree  of  inde- 
pendence . 

In  the  commercial  sphere,  too, 
women  often  had  more  freedom  of  ac- 
tion than  we  might  expect.  Women 
worked  not  only  as  the  partners  of 
their  merchant  husbands  but  as  em- 
ployees and  even  businesswomen  in 
their  own  right.  Some  crafts  (especially 
in  the  textile  and  food  industries)  were 
dominated  by  female  labor,  and  some 
of  these  were  regulated  by  female 
guilds,  whose  regulations  survive. 
While  many  guilds  were  restricted  to 
men,  some  were  open  to  both  sexes,  as 
the  regulations  of  the  Paris  bathhouse- 
keepers  make  clear:  "Be  it  known  that 
no  man  or  woman  may  cry  or  have 
cried  their  baths  until  it  is  day,  because 
of  the  dangers  which  can  threaten 
those  who  rise  at  the  cry  to  go  to  the 
baths.  No  man  or  woman  of  the  afore- 
said trade  may  maintain  in  their 
houses  or  baths  either  prostitutes  of  the 
day  or  night,  or  lepers,  or  vagabonds, 
or  other  infamous  people  of  the  night. 
No  man  or  woman  may  heat  up  their 
baths  on  Sunday,  or  on  a  feast  day 
which  the  commune  of  the  city  keeps." 
Prostitution,  incidentally,  was  legal  in 
most  parts  of  medieval  Europe,  but 
procuring  was  not,  and  municipal  au- 
thorities often  made  efforts  to  regulate 
and  contain  prostitutes'  activities. 


Depending  on  the  place  and  time, 
medieval  women  could  make  con- 
tracts, grant  land,  dispose  of  their  per- 
sonal belongings  by  will,  be  pros- 
ecuted for  infractions  of  commercial 
regulations,  testify  in  court  and  sue  or 
be  sued;  court  records  of  all  these  ac- 
tivities exist.  A  London  woman  named 
Matilda  La  Megre  brought  charges 
against  three  moneylenders,  two  of 
them  women,  for  "unjust  detention"  of 
cloth  which  Matilda  had  pawned  for  a 
sum  of  money;  the  husband-and-wife 
moneylending  team  ended  up  in  the 
Tower  of  London  because  the  other  fe- 


male moneylender's  testimony  proved 
Matilda's  case. 

When  we  think  of  medieval  Europe 
we  often  think  of  the  Christian  church, 
which  dominated  so  many  aspects  of 
life.  Religious  aspects  of  women's 
lives — or  more  accurately  the  lives  of 
religious  women — are  well  repre- 
sented in  the  surviving  sources.  We 
have  the  monastic  "rules"  (sets  of 
regulations)  under  which  nuns  lived; 
some  of  these  are  the  same  as  rules  for 
monks,  while  others  were  written  spe- 
cifically for  nuns.  Bishop  Caesarius  of 
Aries  wrote  the  first  rule  for  nuns  in 
the  sixth  century;  the  first  woman  to 
write  a  monastic  rule  was  St.  Clare  of 
Assisi  in  the  mid-thirteenth  century.  It 
is  in  convents  that  we  most  often  find 
women  writers.  Besides  spiritual  and 
theological  works,  nuns  sometimes 
wrote  about  politics,  history  and  medi- 
cine. Nor  was  a  nun's  life  the  only  op- 
tion for  a  woman  who  wished  to  dedi- 
cate herself  to  religion;  anchoresses  or 
recluses  might  live  under  less  strict 
conditions,  and  Beguines  lived  com- 
munally without  taking  monastic 
vows. 

While  "rules"  show  us  the  ideals  to- 
ward which  nuns  and  other  religious 
followers  were  supposed  to  be  striv- 
ing, it  would  be  naive  to  assume  that 
the  rules  were  followed  to  the  letter, 
especially  when  so  many  nuns  were 


selected  for  the  religious  life  and 
placed  in  convents  by  their  families. 
One  type  of  source  that  balances  the 
orderly  picture  created  by  the  rules  is 
the  bishop's  visitation,  a  record  of  the 
periodic  inspection  of  religious  houses. 
When  Bishop  Eudes  of  Rouen  in- 
spected the  priory  of  Villarceaux  in 
1249,  he  found  what  was  clearly  a 
shocking  state  of  affairs.  No  fewer  than 
eleven  of  the  twenty-three  nuns  are  al- 
leged in  the  records  to  have  had  affairs 
with  various  men,  two  of  them  had  be- 
come pregnant  as  a  result,  and  all  the 
nuns  "let  their  hair  grow  down  to  their 
chin,  and  put  saffron  on  their  veils." 
Moreover,  "Ermengarde  of  Gisors  and 
Joan  of  Hauteville  came  to  blows.  The 
prioress  is  drunk  nearly  every  night.  .  . 
.  The  prioress  does  not  get  up  for  Mat- 
ins, does  not  eat  in  the  refectory,  and 
does  not  correct  excesses."  In  other 
convents  the  offenses  are  less  egre- 
gious: the  nuns  have  pets  or  private 
possessions,  the  convent  finances  are 
in  disarray,  or  the  liturgy  is  sung  too 
fast.  Very  seldom  is  the  fastidious 
bishop  able  to  write  of  some  convent 
he  has  visited,  "We  found  everything 
there  to  be  in  good  condition." 

For  Christians  dissatisfied  with  the 
orthodox  beliefs  and  practices  of  the 
church,  heretical  sects  offered  an  in- 
tense religious  experience  and,  some- 
times, a  greater  role  for  women  in  par- 
ticular. We  know  this  because  Catholic 
churchmen  wrote  in  consternation  of 
women  being  allowed  to  preach  in  the 
heretical  sects  and  even  administer 
their  sacraments.  To  espouse  heresy 
was,  of  course,  a  dangerous  alterna- 
tive, for  the  church  tried  suspected  her- 
etics, and  the  secular  government  pun- 
ished those  who  were  convicted.  The 
records  of  the  Inquisition  give  us  some 
particularly  vivid  accounts  of  the  lives 
of  heretics  in  the  form  of  their  confes- 
sions. In  one  long  and  rambling  narra- 
tive from  fourteenth-century  France, 
the  elderly  Beatrice  de  Planissoles  re- 
counts the  long  process  by  which  vari- 
ous heretical  friends  and  neighbors 
persuaded  her  to  become  a  heretic  her- 
self. Afterwards,  "because  she  was 
very  ill  and  in  bed  and  her  death  was 
expected,  [the  Inquisitor]  told  her  that 
if  she  had  hidden  anything  concerning 
heresy  in  the  confession  that  she  had 
made  above  about  herself  or  others,  or 
if  she  had  accused  a  person  against 
truth  and  justice,  she  should  admit  it 
and  reveal  it,  or  she  should  exonerate 
the  persons  she  had  unjustly  accused." 


Washington  College  Magazine/Sprmg  1993 


Finally,  one  should  remember  that 
although  most  of  the  population  of 
medieval  western  Europe  was  Chris- 
tian and  of  Germanic  descent,  there 
were  also  religious  and  ethnic  minori- 
ties. Muslim  communities  in  Spain, 
Sicily  and  southern  Italy  have  left  be- 
hind laws  and  personal  narratives 
which  show  the  place  of  women  in 
medieval  Islam.  Jewish  communities 
were  found  in  towns  throughout  Eu- 
rope, adhering  to  their  own  religious 
laws  and  standards  of  conduct  while 
interacting  with  the  Christian  majority. 
Jewish  wills  include  family  history  and 
customs,  while  Hebrew  chronicles  tell 
us  of  the  persecutions  that  began  in  the 
late  eleventh  century.  In  the  latter  sto- 
ries, women  often  took  the  lead  in  the 
acts  of  bravery  with  which  the  Jews 
faced  attempts  at  forced  conversion: 
"There  was  a  notable  and  pious 
woman  [in  Speyer]  who  slaughtered 


herself  for  the  sanctification  of  the  Di- 
vine Name.  She  was  the  first  of  those 
who  slaughtered  themselves  in  all  the 
communities." 

As  I  found  in  the  course  of  my 
project,  there  is  a  wealth  of  material 


m 
m 

IP 

nVs^N/v/ 

fy 

ill 

that  reveals  how  women  lived  and 
worked  in  the  Middle  Ages.  Of  course 
this  is  just  one  part  of  the  picture 
which,  as  historians,  we  are  constantly 
enlarging  and  revising.  From  these 


sources  which  address  women's  lives 
we  gain  a  deeper  understanding  not 
only  of  medieval  women  but  of  medi- 
eval society  as  a  whole,  in  all  its  vari- 
ety and  richness. 

Emilie  Amt  is  assistant  professor  of  history 
at  Washington  College. 

Notes 

1  Recommended  basic  books  include  Shulamith 
Shahar,  The  Fourth  Estate:  A  History  of  Women  in 
the  Middle  Ages  (New  York,  1983);  Eileen  Power, 
Medieval  Women  (Cambridge,  1975);  Margaret 
Wade  Labarge,  A  Small  Sound  of  the  Trumpet: 
Women  in  Medieval  Life  (Boston,  1986);  Frances  and 
Joseph  Gies,  Women  in  the  Middle  Ages  (New  York, 
1978);  Angela  Lucas,  Women  in  the  Middle  Ages: 
Religion,  Marriage  and  Letters  (New  York,  1983). 

2  Emilie  Amt,  ed.,  Women's  Lives  in  Medieval  Eu- 
rope: A  Sourcebook  (New  York,  1993). 

1  Barbara  Hanawalt,  The  Ties  Tlmt  Bound:  Peasant 
Families  in  Medieval  England  (Bloomington,  1986). 


Venetian  Sumptuary  Laws  (1299) 


1.  It  has  been  decreed  in  the  Council .  .  . 
that  henceforth  at  weddings  or  on  the  oc- 
casions of  weddings  in  the  city  of  Venice, 
no  one  may  send  or  receive  presents,  or 
gifts,  or  even  goblets,  by  any  method  or 
means,  under  penalty  of  20  soldi  cli  grossi 
for  each  time,  except  that  goblets  may  be 
sent  to  the  home  of  the  bride,  and  also  to 
the  home  of  the  bridegroom,  on  those 
days  when  it  is  customary  to  send  them, 
and  also  to  the  priest,  as  is  the  custom. 

2.  And  that  the  bride  may  not  be  accom- 
panied, either  when  going  to  her  husband 
or  when  returning  home,  by  more  than 
eight  ladies,  and  the  bridegroom  may  not 
have  at  the  wedding  banquet  more  than 
twenty  lords  and  twenty  ladies  in  all. 
And  similarly  the  attendants  on  the  part 
of  the  bride  may  not  be  more  than  the 
said  number  at  the  banquet,  on  the  day  of 
the  wedding.  A  lady  thirteen  years  old  or 
younger  shall  not  be  held  to  be  a  lady,  un- 
less she  is  married,  and  if  she  has  been 
married  and  is  now  a  widow  she  shall  be 
held  to  be  a  lady;  and  a  man  twenty  years 
old  or  younger  shall  not  be  held  to  be  a 
lord. . . . 

5.  Item,  that  no  bride  may  carry,  or  cause 
to  be  carried,  more  than  four  [new] 
dresses  [in  her  trousseau),  under  penalty 
of  20  soldi  di  grossi. . . . 


6.  Item,  that  henceforth  no  man  or  woman 
or  lady  may  wear  borders  of  pearls,  under 
penalty  of  20  soldi  di  grossi,  except  that 
brides,  if  they  wish,  may  have  borders  of 
pearls  on  their  wedding  dress  a  single  time, 
and  similarly  one  headpiece  of  pearls;  and 
they  may  not  place  the  aforesaid  borders  on 
any  gown  other  than  the  wedding  gown. 
And  the  aforesaid  borders,  which  are 
placed  on  the  wedding  dress  and  cloak, 
may  not  be  worth  more  than  20  soldi  di 
grossi  altogether,  under  the  aforesaid  pen- 
alty. 

7.  And  that  no  person  may  wear  an  embroi- 
dered border  beyond  the  value  of  five  lire  di 
piccoli;  and  no  person  may  place  any  em- 
broidered border  on  a  cloak  or  on  a  fur. 
Strings  of  pearls  for  the  hair  are  totally  for- 
bidden and  prohibited,  so  that  no  woman 
or  lady  may  wear  them  henceforth,  under 
penalty  of  100  soldi  for  each  time  she  is 
found  contravening  this  law.  And  also  she 
may  not  have  more  than  one  row  of  gold  or 
amber  buttons  worth  more  than  10  soldi  di 
grossi,  under  the  aforesaid  penalty  of  100 
soldi,  nor  any  hair  ornament  of  pearls  worth 
more  than  100  soldi,  under  the  aforesaid 
penalty. . . . 

8.  Item,  that  henceforth  no  man  or  lady  or 
woman  may  have  more  than  two  cloaks  of 


vair  or  other  fur,  and  if  any  now  have 
more  they  may  not  wear  more  than  two 
of  them  from  now  on,  under  penalty  of 
20  soldi  di  grossi  for  each  time. 

9.  Item,  that  a  lady  or  woman  may  wear 
only  one  cloak  lined  with  silk  under  the 
aforesaid  penalty.  Except  that  if  she 
ought  to  wear  another  silk-lined  cloak  for 
mourning,  she  may  do  so.  .  . . 

10.  Item,  that  henceforth  no  woman's  tu- 
nic may  have  a  train  of  more  than  one 
arm's  length  trailing  on  the  ground  or  an 
underdress  train  of  more  than  half  an 
arm's  length,  under  the  aforesaid  pen- 
alty. Except  that  a  bride  may  have  what- 
ever sort  of  train  she  wishes  a  single 
time,  on  her  wedding  tunic.  And  the  gar- 
ments which  exist  today  may  remain  as 
they  are,  however  many  trains  thev  have, 
and  henceforth  they  may  not  be  manu- 
factured except  as  stated  above,  under 
penalty  of  20  soldi  di  grossi. .  . . 

11.  Item,  that  ladies  are  exempted  and  ex- 
cepted from  these  orders,  when  they  are 
going  to  or  coming  from  the  palace,  and 
may  wear  those  things  and  ornaments 
which  they  bring  from  the  palace,  but  af- 
terwards they  may  not  do  otherwise  than 
others  may,  under  the  aforesaid  penalty 
of  20  soldi  di  grossi. . . . 


Washington  College  Magazine/Spring  1993 


FROM  OUR  PRESIDENT  EMERITUS 

You  Can  Go  Home  Again, 
Thomas  Wolfe 


by  Douglass  Cater 


A  half  century  or  so  ago,  I  departed 
Montgomery,  Alabama,  and  headed  north  in 
pursuit  of  further  education  and  career. 
Although  I  came  back  for  visits,  more  frequently 
when  my  parents  were  living,  the  deep  South 
was  no  longer  my  home. 

My  mentors  had  told  me,  "Go  North,  young 
man,  if  you  want  to  amount  to  something." 
Other  young  men  were  heeding  other  advice. 
One  named  George  Wallace  set  up  political 
headquarters  in  Montgomery  and  managed  to 
make  quite  a  name  for  himself.  Another,  Martin 
Luther  King,  Jr.,  mounted  the  pulpit  at  the 
Dexter  Avenue  Baptist  Church,  led  the 
Montgomery  bus  boycott,  and  later  became  a 
Nobel  Laureate.  Just  across  the  border,  in 
Georgia,  one  who  had  an  extra  consonant  in  his 
name —  born  the  same  year,  he  was  Carter  and  I 
was  Cater —  got  elected  President  of  the  United 
States. 

My  career  took  a  quieter  course.  I've 
speculated  over  what  would  have  happened  if  I 
had  gone  to  the  nearby  university,  studied  law, 
and  followed  in  my  father's  footsteps.  What 
would  have  been  my  role  during  the  crises  that 
beset  my  hometown  amid  awesome  struggles  of 
conscience  and  ambition? 


Instead,  I  took  a  spouse  in  Washing- 
ton and  in  due  course  we  produced 
two  sons  and  two  daughters.  Un- 
settled ambitions  moved  me  along 
from  jounalist,  editor,  and  book  writer 
to  president's  deputy  in  the  LBJ  White 
House,  peripatetic  professor,  think 
tank  director,  a  demi-lord  of  Fleet 
Street,  and  most  recently,  head  of 
America's  tenth  oldest  little  college  of 
the  liberal  arts. 

My  wife  Libby  has  deep-South  roots 
but  she,  too,  departed  to  become  top 
deputy  in  the  Washington  office  of 
Birmingham's  Congressman.  Some  of 
her  city's  movers  and  shakers  had 
plans  to  run  her  for  congresswoman 
when  her  boss  stepped  down  to  seek 
Alabama's  Senate  seat.  But  she  was 
pregnant  with  our  first  child  by  the 
time  the  window  of  opportunity 
opened. 

Libby  has  been  the  modern  Ruth — 
"Whither  thou  goest,  I  will  go."  Dur- 
ing our  42  years  of  matrimony,  there 
have  been  17  domiciles  that  we  called 
home.  Movement  has  kept  her 
young — even  as  it  aged  me.  It  wearies 
me  just  to  watch  her  toting  those  boxes 
and  unloading  those  bales. 

But  our  life  together  was  not  a  saga 
of  hardship  posts.  Most  of  the  years 
were  spent  within  the  beltway  of  the 
nation's  capital  (even  before  the 
beltway  existed).  We  had  sojourns  in 
Wesleyan,  Connecticut,  San  Francisco, 
and  Stanford,  California,  in  Aspen 
Colorado's  Little  Woody  Creek  (where 
later  Margaret  Thatcher  and  George 
Bush  met  to  plan  the  Kuwait  venture), 
London,  England,  and  Chestertown, 
Maryland.  After  eight  serendipitous 
years  as  president  and  first  lady  of 
Washington  College  (whose  founding 
patron  in  1782  was  the  nation's  found- 
ing father),  we  spent  a  season  of  de- 
compression at  the  National  Humani- 


Washington  College  Magazine  /Spring  1993 


ties  Center  near  Chapel  Hill,  North 
Carolina.  And  we  began  to  think  seri- 
ously about  where  was  home. 

The  late  Eric  Sevareid,  once  a  near 
neighbor  on  Virginia's  Seminary  Hill, 
gave  a  toast  comparing  Caters  to  the 
brook  trout  "who  always  dwell  in 
lovely  places."  Any  one  of  our  many 
domiciles  would  have  been  a  fit  spot  to 
settle  down  for  the  final  stretch  of  liv- 
ing. Then  one  recent  April  there  was 
an  epiphany — a  sudden  perception  of 
the  essential  nature  of  things — when 
we  visited  Libby's  sister  now  living  in 
Montgomery.  Departing  nine  days 
later  we  owned  what  we  laughingly 
named  our  "Old  Home  Place"  on 
Cloverdale  Park  just  across  from  the 
First  Methodist  Church.  The  OHP,  we 
call  it  for  short,  seeks  to  plant  quick 
roots  in  the  age  of  fast  food  and  other 


instant  gratifications.  Already  it  has 
suvived  the  acid  test  of  two  Christmas 
reunions. 

What  happened?  It  has  been  difficult 
to  find  words  of  my  own  choosing  so  I 
have  searched  out  learned  authorities 
from  whom  to  take  my  text:  T.S.  Eliot, 


Our  new  Old  Home 
Place  will  be  where  we 
cogitate  on  End  Things 
appropriate  for  those  who 
have  reached,  in  Fred 
Friendly's  apt  descrip- 
tion, "the  Springtime  of 
Senility." 


Albert  Einstein,  Thomas  Wolfe;  F.  Scott 
and  Zelda  Sayre  Fitzgerald.  Eliot  pro- 
vided the  epigram  for  the  change  of 
address  card  we  mailed  to  friends  and 
relations  announcing  our  move.  His 
poem,  "Little  Gidding,"  concluded: 

We  shall  not  cease  from  exploration, 
And  the  end  of  all  our  exploring, 
Will  be  to  arrive  where  we  started, 
And  know  the  place  for  the  first  time. 

Libby's  cousin  offered  a  less  mysti- 
cal explanation  taken  from  the  Time/ 
Life  Book  of  Mathematics:  "The  Random 
Walk  Principle,"  deriving  from  "The 
Law  of  Disorder,"  postulates  that  so 
long  as  a  blind-folded  boy  keeps  walk- 
ing in  an  irregular  fashion  he  will  re- 
turn to  the  lamp  post  which  was  his 
point  of  departure.  Albert  Einstein, 


Work  In  Progress: 
Housebreaking  The  New 
President's  Men 

The  President-elect  vows  he  will 
reduce  the  body  count  in  the 
White  House  and  environs  even  if 
the  congressional  leaders  do  not 
match  him  by  cutting  their  own 
overgrown  staffs.  This  may  not  set 
much  of  a  precedent  for  balancing 
the  federal  budget,  but  it  should 
teach  us  a  thing  or  two  about  how 
Mr.  Clinton  means  to  run  his  shop. 

Well  into  Franklin  Roosevelt's  sec- 
ond term,  the  president's  staff  com- 
prised a  few  functionaries  along  with 
ad  hoc  appointees  "borrowed"  from 
departmental  payrolls.  Then  a  dis- 
tinguished commission  headed  by 
Louis  Brownlow  concluded  that  the 
President  urgently  needed  help.  In 
1939,  Congress  responded  by  provid- 
ing for  six  assistants  and  three  secre- 
taries Roosevelt  could  call  his  very 
own.  The  Budget  Bureau  was 
moved  from  the  Treasury  Depart- 
ment to  become  the  core  of  a  newly 
created  executive  office.  The  mod- 
ern presidency  had  its  beginnings 
barely  in  time  for  the  outbreak  of 
World  War  II. 

It  has  grown  quite  a  bit  since,  and 
spawned  an  ever  more  variegated 
group  of  insiders  who  are  aptly  if 
male-chauvinistically  known  as  the 
President's  Men.  They  occupy  an  ill- 


defined  perch  in  the  pecking  order  of 
high  government.  Neither  pure  politi- 
cians nor  civil  servants,  they  exercise 
heady,  if  presumably  derivative  pow- 
ers, provoking  intriguing  questions 
from  White  House  watchers,  such  as: 

How  well  do  they  enhance  the 
president's  leadership?  Or  do  they 
make  him  more  a  clerk  burdened  with 
routines  and  dogged  by  priorities  set 
by  others,  not  least  themselves?  What 
is  to  keep  them  from  going  amuck  with 
cockamamie  schemes  to  ignore  the 
Congress  and  rule  the  world  directly 
from  the  basement  of  1600  Pennsylva- 
nia Avenue? 

Richard  E.  Neustadt,  whose  study  of 
presidential  power  grew  from  experi- 
ence inside  Harry  Truman's  White 
House,  has  warned  of  an  inherent 
weakness  in  the  constitutional  presi- 
dency requiring  the  incumbent  to 
guard  his  management  options 
shrewdly  if  he  means  to  stay  on  top  of 
his  job.  Jack  Valenti,  tutored  by 
Lyndon  B.  Johnson  experience,  recently 
made  a  supporting  argument  when  he 
decried  media  hype  of  the  White 
House  chief  of  staff  who  gets  his  kicks 
by  shielding  the  president  from  others, 
including  his  own  aides. 

There  are  lessons  in  self-preservation 
to  be  learned  from  experience,  starting 
with  John  R.  Steelman,  who  penciled 
"The"  in  front  of  his  title  as  "Assistant" 
to  President  Truman  but  never  man- 
aged to  make  it  stick.  Sherman  Adams, 
in  the  employ  of  a  former  military 


man,  wielded  considerable  chiefly 
power  until  he  got  into  trouble  over  a 
vicuna  coat  and  was  obliged  to  head 
home  to  New  Hampshire.  President 
Bush's  staff  chief,  John  Sununu,  also 
confused  about  his  job's  perquisites, 
did  not  return  to  New  Hampshire,  pre- 
ferring his  current  career  as  mercenary 
on  the  television  wrangle  called 
"Crossfire."  By  and  large,  the  deputv 
who  aspires  to  be  chief  has  not  enjoved 
notable  success  in  serving  the  better  in- 
terests of  either  the  president  or  him- 
self. 

There  are  other  considerations  the 
new  president  should  weigh  before  he 
shuts  off  his  management  options. 
Most  who  reach  the  White  House, 
even  one  as  young  as  Mr.  Clinton,  are 
pretty  hardened  in  their  habits  of  do- 
ing business.  FDR  ran  a  loose  ship  and 
took  keen  delight  in  playing  one 
deputv  against  another,  therebv  insur- 
ing for  himself  the  role  of  arbiter. 
Eisenhower,  on  the  other  hand,  was 
too  imbued  with  the  militarv  staff  sys- 
tem to  operate  Roosevelt's  way.  (Only 
he  could  know  whether  this  hampered 
or  helped  his  more  limited  vision  of 
the  Presidency.) 

From  my  former  20/20  perspective 
as  member  of  the  Washington  press 
corps,  I  used  to  compose  fanciful  meta- 
phors describing  how  successive  presi- 
dents handled  their  White  House  cote- 
rie. Ike's  was  the  football  squad  with 
players  assigned  fixed  positions  amid 
elaborate  calling  of  signals  and  inter- 


Washington  College  Magazine  /Spring  1993 


while  still  a  young  man,  drew  on  this 
principle  to  describe  the  movement  of 
tiny  particles  suspended  in  a  liquid. 

Not  relishing  comparison  to  blind- 
folded boys  or  suspended  particles,  I 
searched  further,  hoping  that  my 
childhood  hero  Thomas  Wolfe  would 
supply  worthy  insights.  Sure  enough, 
during  the  summer  of  1937,  Wolfe 
wrote  his  friend  Hamilton  Basso  that 
he  was  moving  back  South  to  his  home 
in  Ashville,  North  Carolina  "...  as  a 
result  of  a  very  powerful  and  deep- 
rooted  instinct."  Wolfe  voiced  the 
burning  desire,  "to  make  the  old  con- 
nection and  resume  myself.  I  hope  to 
God  to  strike  out  a  living  word,  to  do 
out  of  the  substance  of  my  life  a  better 
and  truer  work  than  I  have  ever  done 
before."  For  someone  like  me  resonat- 
ing with  desire  to  get  back  to  an  earlier 


career  as  writer,  Wolfe  was  singing  my 
song. 

Then  I  dug  deeper.  Only  six  months 
later  Wolfe  wrote  a  letter  to  his  brother 
Fred:  "About  the  summer  I  spent  at 
home  the  less  said  the  better.  I'd  like  to 
forget  about  it  if  I  could."  When  he 
complained  about  this  ill-fated  experi- 


/  vow  not  to  yield  to  the 
sense  of  fatalism  that 
overtakes  many  old  men 
when  they  reflect  on  the 
good  old  days  and 
speculate  about  what  lies 
ahead. 


ence  to  his  New  York  friend,  Ella  Win- 
ter, widow  of  Lincoln  Steffens,  she 
commented,  "But  don't  you  know, 
Tom,  you  can't  go  home  again."  Wolfe 
grew  quite  excited  and  responded, 
"Can  I  have  that?  I  mean  for  a  title."  So 
originated  the  name  and  thesis  for  his 
book  that  was  sequel  to  The  Web  and 
The  Rock. 

My  counter  thesis  can  be  summed 
up:  "By  George,  Tom  Wolfe,  you  can 
go  home  again!  And  the  Caters  are  go- 
ing to  prove  it."  Our  new  Old  Home 
Place  will  be  where  we  cogitate  on  End 
Things  appropriate  for  those  who  have 
reached,  in  Fred  Friendly's  apt  de- 
scription, "the  Springtime  of  Senility." 

We  act  like  newlyweds  setting  up 
housekeeping  in  the  OHP.  I  no  longer 
feel  the  earlier  pangs  when  we  drove 
by  my  older  Old  Home  Place  where 


minable  time  spent  in  huddles.  JFK's 
basketball  team  put  a  premium  on 
flexibility  and  speed  in  passing  the 
ball.  While  trying  to  describe  the  orga- 
nizing principles  of  a  Texas  posse,  I 
suddenly  found  myself  recruited  by 
LBJ  to  saddle  up  and  gallop  off  in  pur- 
suit of  the  Great  Society. 

The  ensuing  four-and-a-half  years  in 
the  West  Wing  convinced  me  that  the 
way  a  President  runs  his  business 
ought  to  remain  highly  idiosyncratic. 
He  should  be  spared  most  of  the  inter- 
ventions from  self-designated  experts 
who  believe  there  really  is  one  right 
way  to  govern  without  fear  or  favor. 
He  should  be  wary  of  proliferating 
councils  in  the  White  House  proper. 

And  he  should  think  long  and  hard 
about  the  appropriate  role  for  the 
president's  men.  Much  has  changed 
since  Brownlow  wrote  his  report.  My 
boss,  LBJ,  usually  maintained  eight  or 
nine  of  us  wearing  the  generic  title 
"Special  Assistant  to  the  President" 
and  drawing  equal  salaries  (except 
when  Larry  O'Brien's  was  upped  to 
match  the  pay  raise  of  the  Congress- 
men he  had  to  deal  with).  Some  had 
better  defined  functions  than  others, 
but  for  all  of  us  the  doors  to  the  Oval 
Office  and  the  living  quarters  were 
open  much  of  the  time.  We  dis- 
patched memos  for  LBJ's  night  read- 
ing and  typically  drew  responses  by 
next  day.  We  held  no  illusions  about 
role  or  tenure  if  we  should  bring  op- 
probrium on  the  president  or  our- 


selves. Nobody  got  hauled  before  spe- 
cial prosecutors  or,  Heaven  forfend, 
wound  up  in  prison. 

The  news  services  reported  not  long 
ago  that  well  over  a  dozen  aides  in 
George  Bush's  White  House  received 
salaries  of  $100,000  and  up.  Our  old 
title  of  special  assistant  now  sounds 
picayune  compared  with  more  recent 
rankings.  Some  super  deputies  have 
their  own  media  advisers. 

To  cut  back  the  numbers  could  be  a 
useful  beginning  for  the  new  presi- 
dent. But  he  must  change  more  than 
size  if  he  is  to  boost  his  survival  odds 
over  our  most  recent  incumbents,  only 
two  of  whom  (out  of  the  past  nine) 
have  managed  to  survive  two  elected 
terms. 

To  show  who  is  boss,  Mr.  Clinton 
might  usefully  enforce  Louis 
Brownlow's  stern  admonition  that  the 
White  House  staff,  being  neither 
elected  nor  confirmed  for  high  office, 
should  observe  "a  passion  for  ano- 
nymity." This  does  not  mean  secre- 
tiveness  or  hiding  behind  blind  news 
leaks  but  rather  a  particular  attitude 
toward  life  in  the  presidential  service. 

If  I  were  in  the  new  president's 
shoes,  my  prime  candidates  for  prun- 
ing would  be  those  who  cannot  sub- 
due the  lust  for  self-promotion,  who 
cannot  rouse  within  themselves  this 
arcane  passion  for  anonymity. 

"All  The  President's  New  Men  "  first  ap- 
peared in  the  Washington  Post. 


Other  Work  in  Progress: 
On  the  State  of  the  Body 

Lest  there  be  mystery  or  mistaken 
rumor  on  matters  of  my  health, 
I  feel  obliged  to  give  an  update  as 
the  New  Year  begins.  Some  may  re- 
call that  I  stood  down  after  eight 
years  as  President  of  Washington 
College  when  my  trusted  cardiolo- 
gist counselled  against  longer  term 
stress  to  a  heart  scarred  in  childhood 
by  rheumatic  fever.  The  good  news 
is  that  the  heart  seems  to  have 
weathered  the  transition.  My  Bjork- 
Shiley  mitral  valve,  now  fifteen 
years  old,  clicks  away  crisply.  The 
not  so  good  news  is  that  the  atten- 
dant lungs  have  issued  their  own 
complaint  made  manifest  by  what 
the  doctors  term  a  "productive" 
cough  with  assorted  congestive 
problems. 

This,  too,  will  pass  as  did,  long 
ago,  struggles  with  the  lower  back 
and  the  knee.  In  the  interim  it  im- 
poses a  regimen  that  may  puzzle 
others  as  much  as  it  frustrates  me. 
Neither  invalid  nor  bedridden,  I  am 
supposed  not  to  fly  and  sometimes 
have  to  cancel  or  postpone.  Libby, 
bless  her,  is  my  constant  salvation. 
My  pencil  and  paper,  now  abetted 
by  a  confounding  computer,  still  ap- 
pear to  maintain  proper  connections 
with  my  brain. 

Douglass  Cater 


Washington  College  Magazine/Sprmg  1993 


my  parents  resided  many  decades  un- 
til their  death.  In  its  front  yard  stood  a 
large  brick  cube  bearing  a  wooden 
plaque  on  which  was  carved: 

This  Side  Of  Paradise 

The  World's  Only  Scott  and  Zelda 

Fitzgerald  Museum 

Thev  Belong  to  the  World 

Parking  in  the  Rear 

A  red  Ford  circa  1930  was  chained  to  a 
tree  on  the  lawn  where  three  generations 
of  Caters  romped.  Though  Zelda 
Sayre  had  been  Montgomery-born,  I  was 
only  vaguely 
aware  when  my  fa- 
ther bought  the 
house  on  Felder 
Avenue  in  1939 
that  these  notable 
figures  of  the  Jazz 
Age  had  lived 
there  briefly  dur- 
ing the  winter  of 
1931 .  Scott  had  soon 
departed  for  Hol- 
lywood to  try  to 
recoup  his  waning 
fortunes,  while 
Zelda  began  her 
trips  to  sanitaria  in 
vain  search  of 
mental  health. 

While  in  Mont- 
gomery he  had 
worked  on  Tender 
is  the  Night;  she 
wrote  her  only 
novel  Save  Me  the 

Waltz.  So  it  is  fitting  that  Montgomery 
should  honor  this  couple,  and  I  do  not 
nurture  sadnesses  now  that  we  occupy 
our  new  OHP  only  a  block  away. 

It  may  be  appropriate  if  someone 
would  scrape  off  the  paint  that  hides 
my  father's  nameplate — Silas  D.  Ca- 
ter— so  that  visitors  to  the  Museum 
can  be  reminded  of  an  honorable  man 
who  long  served  as  Montgomery's 
City  Clerk  and  State  Senator.  Or  per- 
haps we  should  move  the  plaque  to 
the  new  OHP  and  mount  it  alongside 
one  for  my  mother,  Nancy  Chesnutt 
Cater,  also  native  to  these  environs. 
(She  grew  up  on  a  farm  near  the  rail- 
road crossing  called  "McGhee's 
Switch.") 

It  is  still  early  to  prove  our  thesis  but 
already  Montgomery  offers  culture 
and  companionships  that  make  senior 
citizenship  what  it  ought  to  be.  We  are 
apt  to  begin  the  day  gathered  with  a 


small  gang  of  regulars  around  a  break- 
fast table  of  hominy  grits  and  fixings 
next  door  to  the  Farmer's  Curb  Mar- 
ket, already  explored  for  the  freshest 
comestibles  from  collard  greens  to 
home-baked  chocolate-on-chocolate 
cake.  We  regularly  drop  by  the  Fitness 
Center  at  the  Perry  Street  YMCA  now 
that  we  no  longer  chase  the  tennis  or 
the  golf  ball.  Just  south  of  the  city,  a 
friend's  catfish  pond  offers  quiet  and 
sometimes  fructuous  means  of  getting 
ready  for  supper.  Of  an  evening,  we 
revel  in  the  magnificent  Shakespeare 
Repertory  Theater  now  rising  above  a 


The  New  "Old  Home 


splendid  meadow  dedicated  to  the 
Arts. 

Our  nephew  briefs  us  on  his  chair- 
manship plans  for  Leadership  Mont- 
gomery, a  zesty  bi-racial  effort  to  put 
the  city  on  a  different  map  of  progress 
from  earlier  times.  We  drive  along  the 
downtown  hillside  where  the  first 
White  House  of  the  Confederacy 
stands  only  a  stone's  throw  from  the 
new  Civil  Rights  Memorial,  designed 
by  Maya  Lin,  whose  curved  black 
granite  wall  bears  King's  prophetic 
"until  justice  rolls  down  like  waters 
and  righteousness  like  a  mighty 
stream."  Beneath,  fountain  waters  roll 
across  a  large  stone  tablet  bearing  the 
names  of  40  who  were  slain  during  the 
crisis  years  not  so  long  ago.  Eventide, 
through  the  tall  pines  of  Cloverdale 
Park,  the  illumined  cathedral  lights 
our  way  to  bed. 

Two  writing  projects  are  on  my  front 


burner.  There  may  be  a  small  book 
with  the  working  title,  The  Idea  of  a 
Small  College,  faintly  derivative  of  Car- 
dinal John  Henry  Newman's  classic, 
The  Idea  of  a  University  published  more 
than  140  years  ago.  I  mean  to  pose  the 
question  whether  the  small  liberal  arts 
college,  unique  to  America,  has  be- 
come an  endangered  species. 

My  second  project  bears  the  work- 
ing title,  "Life  Among  the  Politicians." 
Despite  many  years  of  living  and 
working  close  up  to  the  genus  politicus, 
I  have  never  been  tempted  to  cross  the 
line.  Are  they,  too,  an  endangered  spe- 
cies? 

We  enter  the 
countdown  years 
before  the 
Twenty-First  Cen- 
tury and,  more 
ominous  sound- 
ing, the  Third 
Millennium. 
Some  of  us  may 
reach  that  anni- 
versary as  man 
reckons  time, 
anno  domini. 
Surelv  we  should 
be  observing 
history's  major 
birthday  with 
more  solemnitv 
and  self-searching 
than  when  we  cel- 
ebrated our 
nation's  bicenten- 
nial. Those  mak- 
ing the  final 
stretch  need  to  spend  more  ruminative 
time.  Will  the  great  American  Experi- 
ment survive  another  centurv  much 
less  a  full  millennium?  I  vow  not  to 
yield  to  the  sense  of  fatalism  that  over- 
takes many  old  men  when  thev  reflect 
on  the  good  old  davs  and  speculate 
about  what  lies  ahead. 

Coming  home  does  not  mean  letting 
down.  We  feel  each  day  that  this  is  the 
right  place  for  making  our  big  stretch. 
Just  what  the  doctor  ordered  for  two 
wanderers  who  have  arrived  where 
we  started  and  in  Eliot's  words,  have 
begun  "to  know  the  place  for  the  first 
time." 

Douglass  Cater  is  President  Emeritus  of 
Washington  College.  "You  Can  Go  Home 
Again  "  was  originally  prepared  as  an  ad- 
dress to  The  Thirteen  Society  of  Montgom- 
ery and  is  scheduled  to  appear  in  an  up- 
coming issue  of  Modern  Maturity. 


24 


Washington  College  Magazine/ Spring  1993 


WASHINGTON      COLLEGE 


Alumni  Reporter 


Four  Alumni 
Nominated  to 
College  Board 

Alumni  candidates  for  the  1993 
election  to  the  Board  of 
Visitors  and  Governors  are 
RoseMary  Hatem  Bonsack  '55,  Susan 
Thomas  Denton  '69,  Pat  Ingersoll  71, 
and  Bonnie  Abrams  Travieso  '66. 

RoseMary  Hatem  Bonsack,  a  medi- 
cal doctor,  is  the  Hartford  County  rep- 
resentative to  the  Maryland  General 
Assembly,  House  of  Delegates.  She  is 
chairman  of  the  Medical  and  Profes- 
sional Liaison  Subcommittee,  State 
Council  on  Cancer  Control,  and  serves 
on  many  other  committees  including 
the  Environmental  Matters  Committee 
and  the  Task  Force  on  Substance 
Abuse.  RoseMary  and  her  husband, 
James  '53,  have  sent  two  of  their  chil- 
dren to  Washington  College. 

After  graduating  from  WC,  Susan 
Thomas  Denton  served  as  develop- 
ment/alumnae officer  for  the  St.  Paul's 
School  in  Baltimore  and  then  as  associ- 
ate director  of  development  for  Johns 
Hopkins  University.  In  1984,  she  es- 


tablished Denton  and  Associates,  a 
Washington,  D.C.  firm  that  manages 
fundraising  and  special  events  for  edu- 
cational, scientific,  and  public  policy 
organizations  nationwide.  Susan  is  a 
member  of  the  Visiting  Committee. 

Pat  Ingersoll  has  been  nominated  to 
serve  a  second  term  as  alumni  trustee. 
As  our  representative  to  the  Board  she 
has  served  six  years  on  the  Academic 
Affairs  Committee,  the  Student  Affairs 
Committee,  and  the  Honors  and 
Awards  Committee.  Pat  also  served 
on  the  Ad  Hoc  Committee  on  By  Laws, 
the  President's  Advisory  Council  on 
Fitness,  and  as  Board  representative  to 
the  Alumni  Council. 

Bonnie  Abrams  Travieso  earned  her 
J.D.  at  the  University  of  Maryland  Law 
School  and  her  Master  of  Laws  in 
Taxation  at  Georgetown  University. 
She  is  a  partner  in  the  law  firm  of 
Gallagher,  Evelius  and  Jones,  where 

The  Women 's  League  honored  Dorothy 
Wood/ill  Myers  '24  in  December  for  eight 
decades  of  service  to  Washington  College. 


Douglass  Rose  '86  (center)  gathered  with 
friends  in  the  O'Neill  Literary  House  after 
giving  a  talk  on  AIDS. 


she  specializes  in  estate  and  tax  plan- 
ning, probate,  and  charitable  planned 
giving.  Bonnie  and  her  husband, 
Michael  '66,  are  members  of  the 
College's  Visiting  Committee. 

Additional  nominations  may  be 
made  between  February  15  and  March 
15, 1993,  by  petition  of  fifty  (50)  mem- 
bers of  the  Alumni  Association  and  the 
names  of  persons  so  nominated  by  the 
Alumni  Council.  Petitions  should  be 
forwarded  to  the  Nominating  Commit- 
tee of  the  Alumni  Council  in  care  of 
the  Alumni  Office.  An  election  ballot 
will  be  mailed  to  all  alumni-at-large  in 
late  March.  The  two  persons  receiving 
the  greatest  number  of  votes  for  two 
vacancies  will  be  elected  to  six-year 
terms  beginning  June  1, 1993. 

This  article  is  published  in  compli- 
ance with  Article  VI,  Section  3  of  the 
Alumni  Association  By  Laws. 


Washington  College  Magazine/Sprmg  2993 


Washington  College  Reunion  1993 


Thursday,  May  20 


5:00  -  6:30  p.m.  President  and  Mrs.  Trout's  Reception  for  "Older  and  Wiser  Alumni,"  Hynson  Ringgold  House. 

8:00  p.m.  Service  of  Remembrance  on  the  College  Boat  Dock. 


Friday,  May  21 

1:00  -  2:30  Champagne  Cruise  for  the  50th  Reunion  Class. 

2:00  -  6:00  Sho'men  Club  Golf  Tournament,  Chester  River  Yacht  &  Country  Club. 

3:00  -  4:30  "Before  the  Bridge"  —  A  reading  by  Phil  Wingate  '33. 

5:00  -  6:00  President  and  Mrs.  Trout's  Reception  for  the  Class  of  1943  at  the  Hynson  Ringgold  House. 

5:30  -  Cocktails  for  the  Class  of  1953  hosted  by  George  '53  and  Barbara  Townsend  '55  Cromwell, 

Perkins  Hill  Rd.,  Chestertown.  R.S.V.P.  to  Barbara  and  George  (410)  647-0930. 

6:00  -  Supper  for  the  Class  of  1943  hosted  by  Babe  and  Walt  Brandt  at  their  home  in  Chestertown. 

R.S.V.P.  to  Babe  and  Walt  at  778-4448. 

Open  House  at  the  Alumni  House  —  An  informal  reception  for  all  alumni. 

7:00  -  8:30  River  Cruises  for  the  major  Reunion  Classes  of  1963, 1968, 1973,  1983,  1992. 

9:00  - 10:00  All  Alumni  Reception  and  Toast  to  the  Senior  Class. 


Saturday,  May  22 

9:00-10:30  a.m.  Alumni  Association  Buffet  Breakfast  and  Annual  Business  Meeting. 

10:30  -  Noon  "Bandages  of  Soft  Illusion:  Essays  on  the  Shore"  Reading  by  Phil  Wingate  '33. 

"We  Had  a  Dream":  A  discussion  about  the  political  and  social  aspirations  of  the  Sixties 
led  by  the  Class  of  1968. 

Noon  -  2:00  p.m.       Reunion  Picnic  on  the  campus  lawn.  Traditional  bluegrass  music  by  Temperance  Hill  Station  with 
Doug  Livingston  '60.  Bring  your  instruments  for  the  jam  session  to  follow. 

1:30  -  3:30  Odd  vs.  Even  Softball/Volleyball;  Boat  rides  on  the  Chester  River  leave  on  the  half  hours. 

Alumni  Career  Workshops.  Linda  Towne  Cades  '68,  Director,  WC  Center  for  Career  Development. 

TBA  Reception  announcing  the  establishment  of  the  Mary  Martin  Drama  Scholarship  Fund. 

4:30  -  5:30  "Septuagenarian  Sexual  Harassment":  A  panel  discussion  led  by  Dr.  Ted  Kurze  '43,  Casey  Academic  Forum 

5:30  -  7:00  Alumni  and  Faculty  Cluster  Parties. 

7:00  -  9:00  All  Alumni  Reunion  Dinner.  Presentation  of  Class  gifts. 

8:00  President  Charles  Trout's  address  to  the  Alumni  Association. 

9:00-Midnight  Alumni  Dance  in  the  Casey  Academic  Center  Foyer;  Student  Dance  in  Hodson  Hall. 


Sunday,  May  23 

8:00  -  9:00  Breakfast  is  served  in  Hodson  Hall. 

10:30  a.m.  Washington  College  21 1th  Commencement  Ceremony. 

NEW!  A  five-day  (luxury)  bicycle/bed  and  breakfast  tour  of  Kent  County  is  being  offered  this  year.  The  tour  begins  at  Great  Oak 
Manor  on  Sunday  afternoon.  Please  contact  the  Alumni  Office  for  more  information. 


Washington  College  Magazine/Spring  2993 


WASHINGTON       COLLEGE 


Class  Notes 


Z.  y   Walter  "Pete"  Morris  Jr.  regrets  that 
he  has  been  unable  to  attend  any  WC 
events  lately  because  he  is  using  crutches. 

\J\D   Richard  W.  Cooper  of  Salisbury, 
MD,  won  the  Wicomico  County  Historical 
Trust  preservationist  award  for  1992.  In 
1989  he  was  awarded  the  State  Historical 
Trust  preservationist  award,  presented  to 
him  by  his  classmate  Louis  Goldstein. 

v)0  Emerson  P.  Slacum  is  still  enjoying 
retirement  after  20  years,  serving  as  a  vol- 
unteer in  various  activities  such  as  Red 
Cross,  Bloodmobiles,  and  Lions  Club  com- 
munity planning  projects.  He  reports  that 
his  health  is  good  and  gives  his  best  regards 
to  his  fellow  classmates. 

\Jy  C.F.W.  Anderson  of  Hagerstown, 
MD,  is  enjoying  an  active  retirement.  He  is 
busy  with  amateur  radio,  travel  (trips  to 
Switzerland  and  Nova  Scotia  in  1992),  the- 
atre in  D.C.  and  Baltimore,  and  hikes  on 
mountain  trails  in  MD,  PA,  VA,  and  WV. 

H.  Gibbons  "Gibby"  Young  of  Ocean  Isle 
Beach,  NC,  invites  anyone  from  WC  pass- 
ing through  the  area  to  stop  in  to  say  'hi' 
and  to  spend  the  night.  He  says  he  won't 
cook  for  you  but  he  can  direct  you  to  one  of 
the  area's  many  restaurants. 


'48 


'43 


Harry  M.  Slade  of  Ellicott  City,  MD, 
is  looking  forward  to  his  50th  reunion.    Af- 
ter graduating,  Harry  served  on  merchant 
ships  in  WWII.  Since  1947  he  has  worked 
in  the  milk  industry  as  an  employee,  plant 
owner,  sales  representative  for  chemicals  to 
the  industry,  and,  since  his  retirement  in 
1991,  as  a  consultant.  He  and  his  wife 
Theresa  (married  in  1955)  have  three 
daughters  and  two  sons.  They  enjoy  boat- 
ing, golf,  tennis,  and  traveling. 

^O  Dr.  Dorothea  Miller  Linley  of 
Easton,  CT,  recently  retired  from  her  prac- 
tice of  preventive  medicine  and  nutrition,  is 
enjoying  her  two  grandchildren,  and  is 
starting  a  new  business  manufacturing  hon- 
ing stones. 


Ralph  T.  Gies  is  self-employed  as  an 
accountant  and  is  looking  for  a  buyer  for 
his  business. 

T:^/   Dr.  Curtis  A.  Gilgash  recently  had  a 
scholarship  endowed  in  his  name  for  stu- 
dents of  psychology  at  the  University  of 
Tampa.  The  scholarship  funding  will  start 
at  $1,000  per  year  and  will  be  presented  to 
students  of  psychology  who  have  a  3.0  GPA 
and  stand  in  the  top  15%  of  their  class. 

Lou  Smith  of  Salisbury,  MD,  and  his  wife, 
Nancy,  traveled  this  July  via  motor  home  to 
Buffalo,  Toronto,  Ottawa,  and  Montreal. 
They  plan  to  spend  the  winter  in  Florida 
and  Texas. 

<D\J   Ray  Sutton  and  Dian  Latshaw 
Sutton  '51  are  both  retired.  Ray  plays  golf 
and  keeps  very  busy.  They  take  their  Holi- 
day Rambler  Presidential  Trailer  to  Florida 
each  winter  and  to  Hilton  Head  and  Myrtle 
Beach,  SC,  in  the  spring  and  fall. 

ID  J.    Robert  H.  Richardson  has  retired 
from  Hercules,  Inc.  He  is  continuing 
world-wide  marketing,  new  business  devel- 
opment and  export/ import  with  his  busi- 
ness, Keys  International  Trading  Co.,  Inc. 

Mary  "Bidi"  Irish  Watt  of  Fort  Lauderdale, 
FL,  has  retired  and  has  taken  up  grand- 
mothering while  her  husband,  Graham  '49, 
pursues  his  consulting  career.  Graham  is 
now  working  in  Czechoslovakia  with  local 
government  officials  and  is  training  U.S.  of- 
ficials in  disaster  preparation. 


'53 


Elaine  Young  Chambers  and  her 
husband,  Perry  '50,  live  in  Lake  of  the 
Woods,  VA,  (a  year-round  resort  area)  in  a 
log  cabin.  She  has  been  selling  real  estate 
and  is  involved  in  community  activities,  in- 
cluding recreational  bridge  and  square- 
dancing. 

Shirley  Hand  LaWall  of  Ardmore,  PA,  won- 
ders, "Why  are  all  these  people  retiring?" 
She  says  that  she  has  no  such  thoughts,  as 
she  is  happy  selling  real  estate  and  is  now 


with  the  prestigious  firm  Emlen  Wheeler  in 
Haverford,  PA. 

Jy   James  "Jim"  Scott  III  moved  to 
Wellesley,  MA,  two  years  ago,  where  both 
he  and  his  wife  Judy  work  for  John 
Hancock.  He  is  looking  forward  to  visiting 
WC  in  May  of  1993  and  invites  old  friends 
to  visit  when  passing  through  Boston. 

DU     Jane  Wilson  McWilliams  of  An- 
napolis, MD,  is  the  proud  author  of  The 
First  Ninety  Years:  A  History  of  Anne  Arundel 
Medical  Center,  published  in  May  1992. 

D  1  Robert  Cheel  of  Baltimore,  MD,  re- 
cently joined  Coldwell  Bankers  Home  Re- 
alty Professionals,  which  has  branches  in 
Severna  Park,  Annapolis,  and  Ferndale. 

D^-   Holly  Burke  Bohlinger  is  living  in 
Washington,  D.C.  She  is  the  director  of  hu- 
man resources  for  Guest  Services,  Inc.,  a 
food  service  company.  Her  twin  daughters, 
Sarah  and  Samantha,  are  sophomores  at 
Colbv  College  and  at  Lawrence  University 
in  Wisconsin. 


'63 


Patricia  Coleman  of  Houston,  TX, 
flies  for  United  Airlines  and  has  her  own 
business,  the  Southern  Literary  Agency. 


64 


Phillip  LeBel  of  Montclair,  NJ,  con- 
tinues to  chair  the  Department  of  Econom- 
ics and  Finance  at  Montclair  State  in  New 
Jersey.  He  also  is  director  of  CERAF,  the 
Center  for  Economic  Research  in  Africa. 
The  Center  sponsors  annual  conferences  on 
contemporary  issues  affecting  Africa's  eco- 
nomic development,  bringing  together  rep- 
resentatives from  major  policy  institutions, 
as  well  as  publishing  conference  proceed- 
ings and  scholarly  research  articles.  Since 
its  founding  in  1986  bv  Dr.  LeBel,  six  con- 
ferences have  been  held  and  40  manuscripts 
have  been  published. 

DO  Thomas  H.  Berry  has  been  named 
director  of  quality  programs  for  The  Van- 
guard Group  of  Investment  Companies. 


Washington  College  Magazine  /Spring  1993 


O/  Nancy  Lee  Galloway  moved  to  An- 
napolis, where  she  joined  Lucas  Brothers, 
an  office  furniture  and  supply  store. 

DO  Philip  A.  Rousseaux  is  customer 
service  manager  for  Wagner  Bros.  Contain- 
ers in  Baltimore. 

Oy   Fran  Greenbaum  of  Toronto, 
Canada,  is  president  of  F.  Greenbaum  and 
Associates,  a  marketing  research  consulting 
firm.  She  has  two  sons,  Matthew  (9),  and 
David  (8),  and  was  married  to  Morley 
Neinstein  last  October.  (See  Marriages) 

Eric  Koehler  of  Westlake,  OH,  was  recently 
named  president  of  Pinnacle  Media,  the 
broadcasting  buying  division  of  WYSE  Ad- 
vertising in  Cleveland. 

John  Overington  of  Martinsburg,  WV,  has 
been  elected  to  a  fifth  term  in  the  WV 
House  of  Delegates. 

Becky  Simpson  Sutherland,  with  her  hus- 
band and  two  children,  traveled  through 
Maryland  and  Virginia  on  vacation  last 
summer.  Chestertown  was  one  of  their 
stops,  as  was  a  visit  with  Bill  '70  and  Ellie 
Davidson  Leonard  '69  in  Fallston,  MD. 

/  U  Dean  G.  Skelos  was  re-elected  to  the 
New  York  State  Senate  for  his  fifth  term. 

John  Sanford  Snvder  is  a  producer-director 
for  WLVT-TV  39  in  the  Bethlehem,  PA, 
area.  In  1988  he  won  a  Philadelphia-area 
"Emmy"  as  a  cameraman.  In  1989  his  pro- 
gram "Pennsylvania  Recycles:  No  Longer  a 
Choice"  won  a  Pennsylvania  Association  of 
Broadcasters  Award  for  Outstanding  Single 
Public  Affairs  Programs.  His  coverage  of 
the  P.I. A. A.  state  wrestling  championships 
gained  him  awards  for  the  Outstanding 
Single  Sports  Event  in  1988,  '90,  '91,  and  '92. 
He  and  his  wife,  Anna,  have  two  daughters, 
Emily  (2)  and  Alison  (9). 

/  J.   With  an  MS  from  Vanderbilt  in 
1990,  Marian  Williams  Roman  of 
Richardson,  TX,  is  teaching  nursing  at 
Texas  Woman's  University.  Her  specialty 
is  geriatric  psychiatric  nursing.  She  has 
been  active  in  this  field  for  ten  years  in  both 
clinical  and  administrative  roles. 

/  A.  Nancy  M.  Bate  Bayne  is  doing  well 
after  having  survived  some  medical  chal- 
lenges.   She  has  a  nine-year-old  daughter 
whose  school  has  persuaded  Nancy  to  vol- 
unteer her  time  as  adjunct  faculty.  The 
business  she  shares  with  her  husband  has 
had  great  success. 

Janet  Stidman  Eveleth  recently  gave  a 
speech  on  public  relations  to  the  American 
Bar  Association's  mid-year  meeting  in  Bos- 
ton, MA. 


Phyllis  Blumberg-Kosherick  of  Ontario  and 
her  husband,  Harvey,  have  adopted  a  son 
(See  Births).  Phyllis  is  working  as  the  cur- 
riculum coordinator  for  the  McMaster  Uni- 
versity medical  program  as  well  as  the  Di- 
rector of  the  geriatric  Educational  Develop- 
ment Unit. 

Charles  S.  Johnson  of  Henderson,  KY,  is 
farming  on  the  outer  fringes  of  civilization 
and  is  planning  a  March  wedding. 

Gina  Oliva  of  Laurel,  MD,  recently  ap- 
peared in  a  special  advertising  section  of 
Self  magazine  for  Avia  shoes. 

Loretta  M.  West  joined  the  firm  of  Hoffman 
Insurance  Services,  Inc.,  in  Wellesley,  MA 
as  a  licensed  property /casualty  broker.  She 
services  large  commercial  accounts  for  the 
agency.  Active  in  local  politics,  she  was 
elected  last  April  to  town  meeting,  and  in 
1991  she  co-founded  the  Framingham  Con- 
dominium Coalition,  representing  24  asso- 
ciations in  the  town  of  Framingham,  MA. 

/  JG.  Mitchell  Mowell  is  a  lawyer  with 
Mowell,  Nunn,  and  Wadkovsky  and  lives 
in  Chestertown  with  his  wife,  Patty,  and 
two  children,  Rachel  (10)  and  Bobby  (8). 

/  ^  Barbara  Daly  Gnaedig  moved  to 
Greenwich,  CT,  last  year  with  her  husband, 
Gerhard,  and  their  two  children,  Valerie  (8) 
and  Philip  (4).  She  enjoys  teaching  part- 
time  (English  conversation  and  reading). 

Dr.  Lisa  P.  Turner  has  been  promoted  to 
Corporate  Vice  President  of  Human  Re- 
sources at  Connectronics,  Inc.,  in  Fort  Lau- 
derdale, FL.  She  holds  an  A.S.  in  Engineer- 
ing, an  MBA,  a  D.S.  in  Management  Sci- 
ence, and  a  Ph.D.  in  business.  In  her  first 
year  at  Connectronics,  she  saved  the  com- 
pany more  than  $850,000  by  implementing 
participative  work  teams,  auditing  insur- 
ance and  benefits  programs,  and  boosting 
productivity  through  computer  automation 


Jennifer  Butler  '79,  a  pilot  unth  USAir,  was 
married  in  May  to  Fred  Mathis,  a  lieutenant  in 
the  Statesville,  NC,  Police  Department.  She 
poses  here  in  an  engine  of  a  Boeing  737. 


and  improving  employee  communications. 

/  O     Paul  J.  Becker  has  been  promoted 
to  vice  president  of  Ranger  Insurance  Com- 
pany. Paul  and  his  family  are  relocating 
from  Chicago  to  sunny  Houston. 

Peter  Fitzgerald  has  been  promoted  to 
President  and  General  Manager  of  the 
Philadelphia  branch  of  Ferguson  Enter- 
prises, Inc.  of  Newport  News,  VA. 

/  D   Pamela  S.  Davis  Naplachowski  of 
Orlando,  FL,  recently  represented  Wash- 
ington College  at  the  inauguration  of  John 
C.  Hitt,  the  President  of  the  University  of 
Central  Florida. 

/  /    Paul  J.  Noto  is  serving  his  fourth 
term  as  Mayor  of  Mamarmuk,  Westchester 
County,  New  York. 


78, 


1  Greg  Brandon  of  Norfolk,  VA,  has 
received  orders  to  the  USS  Theodore 
Roosevelt  as  the  Combat  Information  Center 
Officer. 


79 


Susanne  Brogan  of  Annapolis,  MD, 
was  appointed  by  Governor  Schaefer  to  the 
Maryland  Public  Sen-ice  Commission. 

Christine  Butler  is  a  Svstems  Engineer  with 
Silicon  Graphics  in  Mountain  View,  CA. 

1V1   OU     Marv  Ann  Fenton  Gleason  is 
manager  of  the  Maryland  Department  of 
Economic  and  Employment  Development's 
Chestertown  and  Grasonville  offices. 

OU  Lawson  (Rick)  Narvell,  Jr.  works  as 
a  Human  Performance  Investigator  for  the 
National  Transportation  Safety'  Board. 


Washington  College  Magazine/Spring  1993 


Marriages 

Fran  Greenbaum  '69  to  Morley 
Neinstein,  on  October  11,  1992. 


Jennifer  Butler  '79  to  Fred  Mathis,  in 
May  1992. 

Katv  Burke  '83  to  Tim  Stanton,  on  Au- 
gust 1, 1992. 

Henry  Wittich  '84  to  Susannah  Kendall 
Chase  '90  on  September  26,  1992. 

Barbara  A.  Brown  '86  to  John  Dee 
Kronner,  on  May  16, 1992. 

Stephanie  Ann  Goodwin  '89  to  Henry 
W.  Ramsey  '89  on  December  28, 1991. 

Charlotte  Post  '89  to  Simons  L.  Chase, 
Jr.  on  September  12, 1992. 

April  Dean  '90  to  Wayne  Carter  '90  on 
December  12,  1992.  MaryBeth  Ander- 
son '90  was  a  bridesmaid.  John  Kircher 
'90  was  best  man.  Jim  McKenzie  '90 
and  Rob  Diner  '90  were  ushers.  Also 
attending  the  wedding  were  classmates 
Shanda  Farrell  and  Jeff  "Hippie" 
Heubeck. 


Births 


Doug  Dressel  '69,  a  son,  Timothv  Eric 
(Teddy),  on  June  28, 1992. 


Henn/  '84  and  Susannah  Chase  Witticli  '90. 


Phyllis  Blumberg-Kosherick  '72,  a  son  by 
adoption,  Noah  Harris.  Noah  was  born 
during  May  1992  and  adopted  during  Octo- 
ber, 1992.  He  joins  his  brothers  Adam,  10 
and  Barrv,  6. 

Paul  J.  Noto  '77,  a  daughter,  Heather  Sue, 
on  May  4,  1992. 

Sandra  Evans  Mevers  '81,  a  son,  Bryan 
Alexander,  on  June  5,  1992.  Bryan  joins  sis- 
ter Kelly,  4. 

John  Lonnquest  '81,  a  daughter,  Jennifer 
Marie,  on  December  17,  1991. 

Donna  Taylor  Mehta  '81,  a  son,  Kailas 
Kaushik,  November  15, 1992. 


Ronald  K.  Wright  '81,  a  son,  Nicholas  R. 
Wright,  on  December  17, 1991. 

Roberta  Baumann  Gardullo  '82,  a  son, 
Patrick  Michael,  on  May  6,  1992. 

Becca  Fincher-Kiefer  '82  and  Chris  Kiefer 
'81,  a  son,  Willem  Creed  Kiefer,  on  July  2, 
1992. 

Elizabeth  Taylor  Friedemann  '84,  a  daugh- 
ter, Hannah  Marie,  on  April  18,  1992. 

Maria  Jose  Vanegas-Pessoa  '84,  a  daughter, 
Laura  Vanegas-Pessoa,  on  March  27, 1992. 
Laura  joins  her  sister  Estefania,  born  July 
22,  1990. 

Patrice  Miller  Burdalski  '85,  a  son,  Michael 
Dalton,  on  October  3, 1992.  Michael  joins 
his  sister  Danielle  Marie,  15  months. 

Andrea  Clavville  Erving  '86,  a  son,  Austin 
Lee,  on  May  1,1992. 

Tommv  Moore  '86  and  Dianne  Treuth 
Moore  '89,  a  daughter,  Carter  Elizabeth,  on 
September  11,  1992. 

Kim  M.  Faulkner  Coulbourne  '87,  a  daugh- 
ter, Hillary  Marie,  on  April  26,  1992. 
Hillary  joins  sister  Meghan,  born  January 
1990. 

Janet  Szabo  '88  and  Thomas  M.  Schuster 
'88,  a  daughter,  Mariah  Suzanne,  on  Octo- 
ber 2, 1992. 


Married  to  Carolyn  Marciszewski  in  1988, 
the  couple  has  a  daughter,  Alyssa,  born  in 
June  1991. 

O  1  Ronald  K.  Wright  of  Lutherville, 
MD,  has  been  working  for  the  Travelers  In- 
surance Company  since  1985.  In  1990  he  re- 
ceived a  promotion  to  the  position  of  Finan- 
cial Services  Manager.  Ronald  says  hello  to 
the  KA's  of  '81  and  to  the  Kent  House  gang. 


Missy  Combes  '85  married  Stei'en  Neglex/  on 
July  11th,  1992  in  Spruce  Pine,  NC.  Several 
classmates  attended.  Pictured  with  the  bride 
and  groom  (center  top)  are:  (top  row)  Donald 
Hezoes,  Amy  d'Ablemont,  Carle  Conway, 
Marge  Betle\/,  Sarah  Conway,  and  (seated) 
Cindy  Hill,  Bill  Knight,  and  Deirdre  Mclntyre. 

Glen  Beebe  is  deputy  Mayor  of  Washington 
Township,  Mercer  County,  New  Jersey. 


OZ.  Christy  Holt  Chesser  is  a  Deputy 
State's  Attorney  for  St.  Mary's  County,  MD. 
She  and  her  husband,  Scott,  have  a  son, 
Kevin  Scott,  who  is  five  years  old. 

Dr.  Valerie  Moore  joined  the  medical  staff 
of  Calvert  Memorial  Hospital  on  Oct.  1. 
She  is  with  the  medical  practice  of 
Damalouji  and  Associates,  with  offices  in 
Prince  Frederick  and  Leonardtown,  MD. 


M'83 


Last  July,  J.  Temple  Blackwood 
of  Centreville,  MD,  became  Headmaster  of 
Queen  Anne  School,  a  co-ed  institution  for 
grades  7-12  located  in  Upper  Marlboro, 
MD. 

0\3  Peter  D.  Keyser,  Jr.  obtained  a 
journeyman's  license  in  carpentering  in 
1985  and  then  went  into  the  restaurant  busi- 
ness, working  at  the  Historic  Inns  in  An- 
napolis as  a  pastry  chef  in  1988.  Since  then 
he  has  been  working  for  Marriott  and  is 
now  Concierge  at  Marriott's  Hunt  Valley 
Inn  outside  of  Baltimore.  He  resides  in 
Cockeysville  with  his  wife  of  two  years, 
Karen,  and  their  two  Siamese  cats. 


Washington  College  Magazine  /Spring  1993 


The  Advantages  Of  Using  Trusts 


TRUSTsinyour 
will  are  an  im- 
portant way  to 
give.  There  are 
many  kinds  of 
trusts  for  various 
purposes.  But  they 
all  have  one  thing 
in  common:  They 
assure  that  your 
property  will  be 
handled  as  you 
wish.  Property  left  outright  often  has 
away  of  ending  up  in  the  wrong  hands 
—  and  may  be  exposed  needlessly  to 
death  taxes  and  probate  costs. 

A  trust  plan  can  mean  substantial 
savings  in  taxes  for  your  family.  As- 
sets placed  in  a  properly  drafted  trust 
can  avoid  taxation  in  the  surviving 
beneficiary's  estate,  while  assuring  the 


survivor  a  life  income  and  a  comfort- 
able style  of  living. 

Assuming  you  needn't  worry 
about  estate  taxes  could  be  a  costly 
mistake.  The  tax  impact  on  the  estate 
of  the  spouse  who  dies  last  cannot  be 
ignored.  The  federal  estate  tax  bites 
deeply  into  a  taxable  estate  of  more 
than  $600,000. 


A  trust  for  the 
benefit  of  your 
spouse  for  life,  with 
the  balance  of  the 
trust  going  to  a 
charitable  institu- 
tion such  as  Wash- 
ington College,  is 
an  attractive  option. 
You  can  create  the 
trust  in  your  life- 
time, or  establish 
the  trust  as  an  instrument  of  vour  will. 
Your  attorney  should  be  involved 
in  all  legal  aspects  of  your  estate  plan- 
ning, but  we  can  help  you  create  a 
meaningful  legacy.  Contact  Martin 
Williams,  Assistant  Vice  President  for 
Major  Gifts,  Washington  College, 
Chestertown,  MD  21620.  (800)  422- 
1782  ext.  7804. 


ESTATE     TAXES 


Avery  Woodworth  recently  spent  an  after- 
noon with  John  '84  and  Isabel  Lescure  '85 
and  Dave  '83  and  Annie  Friedman  Singer 
'85  at  the  Lescures'  beautiful  house  in 
Kennebunkport,  Maine. 

Ot:  Peggy  Hoffman  of  Towson,  MD,  is 
Assistant  Dean  of  Housing  at  Towson  State 
and  also  teaches  German.  She  recently 
traveled  through  Europe  with  Joe  DuBose 
'89  where  they  crossed  paths  with  Muk 
Graf  von  Korff  '85. 


'85 


Marge  Betlev  is  Managing  Director 
of  the  NewMusic-Theater  Ensemble  in  Min- 
neapolis, a  performing  arts  organization 
dedicated  to  the  creation,  development,  and 
production  of  new  music-theater  works. 

Amv  d'Ablemont  is  now  Executive  Assis- 
tant to  the  Director  of  the  Center  for  Dance 
Education,  Boston  Ballet.  She  oversees  the 
educational  programs,  most  notably 
CITYDANCE,  one  of  the  country's  first  pro- 
grams which  offers  access  to  high  level 
dance  training  to  inner  city  children.  Her 
address  is  26  Upland  Road-#2,  Cambridge, 
MA  02140. 

Daniel  C.  McNeese  and  his  wife,  Brownyn 
Maguire  '87,  are  keeping  busy  raising  their 


son  Matt.  Their  landscape  business  contin- 
ues to  grow,  and  they  welcome  WC  alumni 
to  come  out  and  try  some  of  the  great 
pheasant  and  duck  hunting  in  Kansas. 


'86 


Nancy  Klos  is  still  working  at  P.T.P. 
Industries  in  Baltimore.  She  was  recently 
promoted  from  Personnel  Manager  to  Man- 
ager of  Customer  Service  and  Office  Ad- 
ministration. 

Sisters  Tammy  Tiehel  '86  and  Amy  Tiehel 
'91,  of  Ridley  Park,  PA,  are  working  to- 
gether for  an  independent  film  company 
making  documentaries  and  educational 
films.  Amy  is  an  associate  producer  and 
Tammy  is  a  scriptwriter.  They  are  also 
working  on  an  independent  production  of 
their  own. 

Aleksandar  (Sandy)  Vujanic  is  working  on 
a  master's  degree  in  social  work  at  the  Uni- 
versity of  Maryland  in  Baltimore. 

O  /  Sandra  Freeman  Cannon  has  been 
with  the  Heron  Point  Retirement  Commu- 
nity for  three  years  in  sales  and  marketing 
and  as  the  move-in  coordinator. 

Heidi  E.  Collier  spent  three  weeks  of  her 
summer  traveling  and  hiking  the  interior  of 


Alaska.  She  also  flew  to  Barrow,  AK,  and 
walked  on  the  ice  in  the  Arctic  Ocean, 
where  it  was  32°  F  in  June.  She  now  works 
at  the  University  of  Virginia  Medical  Center 
in  Charlottesville,  VA,  providing  clinical  so- 
cial work  to  the  Neurosurgery  ICU  and 
sub-acute  patients. 

Vincent  A.  Hvnson  has  been  appointed  dis- 
trict representative  for  Maryland's  Con- 
gressman Wayne  T.  Gilchrest.  Vincent  has 
been  assigned  to  work  specifically  with  the 
First  District's  black  constituents  to  help 
their  representative  evaluate  the  programs 
designed  to  assist  them  and  explore  the 
need  for  new  initiatives  in  the  state  and  the 
District  of  Columbia. 

Patrick  J.  McMenamin,  Jr.  became  an  Asso- 
ciate at  O'Brien  and  Ryan  in  Plymouth 
Meeting,  PA,  and  will  concentrate  on  medi- 
cal malpractice  defense  litigation.  This 
move  from  his  two-year  stay  at  the  Mont- 
gomery County  District  Attorney's  Office 
took  place  on  November  30,  1992. 

1V1    OO  Sharon  Strand  is  the  Director  of 
the  Writing  Lab  at  Bowling  Green  State 
University,  Bowling  Green,  OH.  She  has  an 
ABD  in  Rhetoric  and  Composition  from 
BGU. 


Washington  College  Magazine/Spring  1993 


OO  Chris  Dollar  is  moving  to  Australia 
to  try  out  for  their  world  cricket  team.  If 
that  doesn't  work  out,  he  hopes  to  buy  his 
own  sugar  cane  farm. 

Joan  McWilliams  of  Stevensville,  MD,  is 
working  for  Turner  Pension  Consultants, 
Inc.,  in  Annapolis,  MD,  and  is  responsible 
for  the  administration  and  tax  compliance 
of  pension,  profit  sharing,  and  401(K)  plans 
for  more  than  100  corporate  clients  in  the 
area. 

Michael  J.  Woodfolk  and  his  wife  recently 
bought  a  house  in  Charlottesville,  VA, 
where  Mike  is  teaching  history  and  coach- 
ing lacrosse  at  St.  Anne's-Belfield  School. 

Oy  Genie  Auchincloss  lives  in  Chester- 
town  and  teaches  eighth  grade  English  in 
Elkton,  MD.  Recently  she  participated  in 
her  first  singles  rowing  race  and  ran  on  a 
triathlon  team. 

Gregory  Johnson  has  been  promoted  to 
commercial  banking  representative  with 
the  First  National  Bank  of  Maryland  in 
Salisbury. 

Ann  Bolduc  Kraper  loves  her  work  as  a 
computer  training  manager  for  the  Allstate 
Insurance  Company.  She  has  been  married 
to  husband  Don  for  two  years;  Sandy  Perez 
'89  was  an  attendant  at  the  wedding. 

Laura  Mclntyre  has  been  a  Personnel  Man- 
agement Specialist  at  the  National  Institutes 
of  Health  (Bethesda,  MD)  since  her  gradua- 
tion. She  has  taken  some  graduate  courses 
at  the  University  of  MD  and  urges  WC  stu- 


dents to  enjoy  college  while  they  can  be 
there  full-time! 

Mary  Widdifield  is  living  in  San  Francisco, 
where  she  keeps  running  into  Matt  Kelly 
'90.  She's  been  doing  some  free-lance  work 
for  a  children's  magazine  and  is  realizing 
that  she  makes  a  better  kid  than  an  adult. 
Mary  wonders:  "Are  any  other  WC  grads 
having  the  same  problem?" 

"U   Newly  weds  Wayne  and  April  Dean 
Carter  will  be  buying  a  home  this  spring 
and  feel  it  appropriate  to  christen  the  club 
room  with  a  "1993  Caps  Tourney  Extrava- 
ganza." They  would  like  to  locate  fellow 
alumni.  If  you  would  like  to  be  part  of  the 
festivities,  please  send  your  address  and 
phone  number  to  9104  Swiven  Place,  Apt. 
1-C,  Baltimore,  MD  21237. 

Michael  Sell  is  part  of  the  military's  hu- 
manitarian effort  to  feed  the  starving 
people  of  Somalia.  A  lance  corporal  in  the 
U.S.  Marine  Corps,  he  left  for  Somalia  in 
early  December. 

y  1  Kelli  J.  Farrell  of  Baltimore,  MD, 
started  teaching  aerobics  with  the  Loch 
Raven  Recreation  Council  in  September  and 
loves  it.  She  is  still  going  to  school  part- 
time  and  will  student-teach  kindergarten 
and  first  grade  in  the  spring. 

Greg  Hay  is  continuing  his  career  in  outside 
sales  for  Skytel  Corporation  in  Chicago.  He 
is  looking  forward  to  seeing  all  of  his 
Kappa  Alpha  brothers  when  he  returns  for 
graduation  in  May. 


Kevin  Holland  moved  to  Baltimore,  where 
he  is  communications  director  for  a  state- 
wide industry  association.  He  is  enjoying 
life  away  from  the  Shore,  though  he  admits 
he  occasionally  visits  Chestertown  to  hang 
out  at  Andy's  with  friends. 

Julianne  Morgan  will  begin  dental  school  in 
the  fall  of  1993.  She  has  been  accepted  to 
University  of  Pennsylvania,  Temple,  Uni- 
versity of  Maryland,  and  University  of 
Pittsburgh. 

1V1    y  Z.   Vlarcia  J.  Bartino  is  principal  of 
Holy  Cross  Elementary  School  in  Dover, 
DE.  She  was  recently  appointed  by  Gover- 
nor Michael  N.  Castle  to  serve  as  a  member 
of  the  Task  Force  created  by  Senate  Joint 
Resolution  15  to  study  the  feasibility  of  a 
voluntary  community  Saturday  school  pro- 
gram. 

y  A.  Pamela  S.  Feeney  is  living  in  North- 
ern Virgina  and  working  with  a  small, 
Capitol  Hill,  low-income  housing  lobby 
group  called  the  National  Council  of  State 
Housing  Agencies,  where  she  specializes  in 
publications. 

Jennifer  Mowll  is  a  research  chemist  for  Al- 
lied Signal  in  Morristown,  NJ. 

Jeffrey  W.  Rexford  is  a  product  and  invest- 
ment specialist  for  Chase  Manhattan  Bank 
at  their  world  headquarters  in  New  York 
City. 

Sue  Wiater  is  a  veterinary  technician  at  the 
Eastern  Shore  Animal  Hospital  in  Chester- 
town. 


Deaths 


B.  Hackett  Turner,  Jr.  '30  of  Centreville, 
MD,  died  December  17, 1992  following  a 
long  illness.  Judge  Turner  practiced  law 
with  his  brother  in  Centreville  until  1968 
when  he  was  appointed  as  a  judge  on 
Maryland's  2nd  Judicial  Circuit.  He  was 
on  that  bench  until  his  retirement  in 
1978.  He  served  in  the  intelligence  divi- 
sion of  the  Army  Air  Forces  in  England, 
France,  and  Germany  during  World  War 
II.  Judge  Turner  is  survived  by  his  wife, 
Dorothy,  a  brother,  Edward  Turner  '38, 
three  stepchildren,  and  a  nephew. 

Earl  T.  Willis  '31  of  Tampa,  FL,  died  on 
December  5, 1992.  Mr.  Willis  held  a  doc- 
torate in  education  from  George  Wash- 
ington University.  He  taught  at  Towson 
State  University  where  he  was  chairman 
of  the  social  science  department  and  he 
also  served  as  dean  of  instruction  at 
Salisbury  State  University  for  12  years. 


Mr.  Willis  later  returned  to  TSU  and  be- 
came a  graduate  professor  until  his  retire- 
ment in  1977.  He  received  an  Alumni  Cita- 
tion for  distinguished  service  in  education 
from  WC  in  1964.  He  is  survived  by  his 
wife,  Melva. 

Frederick  W.  Reinhold  '34  of  Charlottes- 
ville, VA,  died  September  26, 1992  in  Uni- 
versity of  Virginia  Medical  Center  of  a  heart 
attack  following  a  long  illness.  Mr. 
Reinhold  was  a  consultant  on  the  industrial 
water  problems  before  retiring  to 
Charlottesville  in  1970,  and  from  1971  to 
1981  he  was  a  technician  in  the  Renal  Dialy- 
sis Unit  of  the  University  of  Virginia  Medi- 
cal Center.  Mr.  Reinhold  is  survived  by  his 
wife,  Jean  Booth  Reinhold,  his  sister, 
Mildred  Sanford,  his  two  sons,  four  daugh- 
ters, and  10  grandchildren. 

James  Stevens,  Jr.  '43  of  Baltimore,  died 
suddenly  on  November  20, 1992.  Jim  taught 
social  studies  for  25  years  in  the  Baltimore 
City  Public  School  System  and  was  a  Recre- 


ation Leader  for  the  Baltimore  City  Bureau 
of  Recreation.  He  was  a  member  and  past 
chairman  of  the  WC  Athletic  Hall  of  Fame 
and  a  former  president  and  member  of  the 
Maryland  Professional  Baseball  Associa- 
tion. Jim  served  in  the  Marine  Corps  dur- 
ing World  War  II.  In  the  past  few  years 
Jim  participated  in  the  Maryland  Senior 
Olympics  and  qualified  for  the  Nationals 
several  times.  He  is  survived  by  two 
daughters,  two  grandsons,  and  one  sister. 

Clifton  E.  Bean  '72  of  Ft.  Lauderdale,  FL, 
died  on  June  20, 1992.  A  17-year  resident 
of  South  Florida,  Clif  was  a  Telemarketing 
Supervisor  for  Rugby  Laboratories  and 
was  honored  as  Salesperson  of  the  Year  in 
1988.  Clif  is  survived  by  his  longtime 
companion,  Mark  C.  Alsaker  of  Fort  Lau- 
derdale, and  by  an  aunt.  Mr.  Alsaker  re- 
quests that  donations  be  made  in  Clif's 
name  to:  Center  One,  2518  West  Oakland 
Park  Blvd.,  Ft.  Lauderdale,  FL  33311,  an 
organization  that  offers  care  and  support 
for  people  living  with  AIDS. 


Washington  College  Magazine /  Spring  1993 


WASHINGTON      COLLEGE 


Currents 


The  Growing 
Irrelevance  of 
Journalists 

by  Richard  Harwood 

Reprinted  with  permission  from  the 
Washington  Post. 

I  journeyed  to  Europe  [recently]  to 
see  how  the  news  business  looks 
there.  Not  too  good.  Publishers 
worry  about  the  economy  and  a  loss  of 
readers.  Family-owned  newspapers 
are  gobbled  up  by  big  chains.  The  un- 
employment lines  include  a  lot  of  jour- 
nalists in  England  and  Switzerland. 
Their  prospects  are  poor  for  reemploy- 
ment and  are  aggravated  by  a  flood  of 
young  people  seeking  work. 

The  picture  in  the  U.S.  is  much  the 
same:  shrinking  profits,  fewer  job  op- 
portunities and  a  shrinking  audience. 

We  have  something  else  in  common 
— a  sense  of  uncertainty  over  where 
journalism  is  headed.  Television  has 
become  the  main  supplier  of  news 
and,  among  the  media,  the  most  potent 
political  force.  It  has  changed  the  na- 
ture of  what  we  do.  The  camera  makes 
Everyman  an  "eyewitness  to  history." 
The  need  for  the  surrogate  witness  — 
the  journalist  —  is  diminished. 

This  was  clearly  demonstrated,  in 
the  view  of  Ignacio  Romanet,  editor  of 
the  French  monthly,  Le  Monde 
Diplomatique ,  during  the  Gulf  War. 
When  the  correspondent,  Peter  Arnett, 
announced  that  the  bombs  had  begun 
to  fall,  we  could  see  that  for  ourselves 
through  the  cameras  of  CNN.  We 
waited  for  more:  How  many  planes 
came,  how  many  were  lost,  how  many 
casualties,  how  much  retaliation? 
Arnett  didn't  know.  "It  was  obvious," 
Romanet  said,  "that  he  had  no  more 
information  than  any  of  the  four  mil- 


lion people  of  Baghdad."  He  was  thus 
irrelevant  to  the  story. 

When  the  cameras  made  us  witness 
to  the  military  briefings,  the  assembled 
correspondents  served  little  purpose; 
they  were  hapless  victims  of  "demo- 
cratic censorship"  that  drowns  us  in 
information  we  have  no  time  or 
method  to  check  out.  When  the  jour- 
nalists ventured  out,  they  and  their 
cameras  sometimes  lied  to  us.  We  saw 
those  explosions  in  the  night  sky.  Were 
they  Patriots  blowing  up  Scuds,  as  we 
were  told?  Or  were  they  Patriots  self- 
destructing?  Does  this  form  of  specta- 
tor sport  require  commentators?  Or 
are  t.v.  journalists  destroying  them- 
selves with  their  own  technology? 

Similar  questions  arose  out  of  the 
American  political  campaign.  In  the 
early  months,  according  to  a  study  by 
Paul  Taylor  for  the  20th  Century  Fund, 
72  percent  of  all  the  networks'  air  time 
devoted  to  the  election  was  monopo- 
lized by  a  handful  of  reporters  and 
commentators:  "Quotes  from  voters, 
political  experts  and  other  sources 
made  up  15  percent  and  sound  bites 
from  the  candidates  made  up  just  13 
percent."  If  a  word  count  were  done 
on  the  newspapers,  a  similar  picture 
probably  would  emerge. 

What  these  numbers  mean  is  that 
journalists  dominate  the  conversations 
of  democracy  in  the  U.S.  Candidates 
have  long  been  aware  of  that.  The 
purchase  of  TV  ads  was  their  tradi- 
tional response.  This  year  they  discov- 
ered the  "New  News  Media" — talk, 
entertainment  and  call-in  shows — 
which  provided  hours  of  free  time  be- 
fore huge  audiences.  "By  mid-June," 
Taylor  wrote,  "there  were  so  many 
television  hosts  offering  so  many  long 
interviews  and  call-in  formats  that  the 
Clinton  campaign  canceled  plans  for  a 
second  half  hour  of  paid  time." 


Another  contributor  to  this  study  is 
Jay  Rosen,  a  professor  of  journalism  at 
New  York  University.  "If  the  rise  of  the 
call-in  show  format  means  anything," 
he  writes,  "it  means  that  many  viewers 
see  no  purpose  in  having  the  journalist 
intervene  in  politics.  Max  in  Seattle 
feels  as  well  represented  by  Julie's 
question  from  Houston  as  he  would  be 
by  San  Donaldson's  inquiry  from  New 
York."  Great  numbers  of  Americans 
are  turned  off  by  the  "cult  of  tough- 
ness" in  our  journalism,  Rosen  says,  a 
"toughness"  that  demeans  and  tries  to 
embarrass  people  in  public  life  by  ex- 
hibiting "a  level  of  shamelessness  and 
aggression  that  ordinary  people  cannot 
manage"  and  do  not  understand  or  ap- 
plaud. 

"The  press,"  he  says,  "ought  to  see... 
a  warning:  Politics  without  journalists 
is  a  prospect  we  have  glimpsed  this 
year,  and  for  the  moment  it  looks 
rather  good.  If  journalists  cannot  con- 
vince the  rest  of  us  that  they  belong  on- 
screen, that  they  are  worth  listening  to, 
that  they  add  something  to  public  dis- 
course that  would  be  missing  if  they 
were  not  there,  then  the  press  will  lose 
an  asset  of  inestimable  value:  not  only 
the  attention  of  television  viewers  but 
the  public  support  it  needs  to  remain 
free  and  independent." 

I  do  not  know  if  there  is  any  connec- 
tion between  the  present  practice  of 
journalism  and  the  economic  difficul- 
ties the  press  is  encountering  both  here 
and  in  Europe.  I  do  not  know  if  televi- 
sion is  inexorably  eroding  the  authoritv 
and  social  utility  of  journalists  in  the 
Western  world.  But  something  is  hap- 
pening here  that  is  not  trivial.  It  de- 
serves our  attention. 

Richard  Harwood,  retired  ombudsman  for 
the  Washington  Post,  teaches  journalism 
at  Washington  College. 


Washington  College  Magazine/S;in'ȣ  1993 


College  Events 

February  21 

Music  by  "The  Sepia  Tones"  featur- 
ing Chestertown's  Marlon  Saunders. 
Tawes  Theatre,  2:00  p.m.  Sponsored 
by  the  African-American  History  and 
Culture  Committee  and  the  Dale 
Adams  Heritage  Exchange. 

February  22 

O'Neill  Literary  House  Monday 
Series  presents  Marty  Williams  '75 
on  "Investment  Strategies  of  the 
Great  Writers."  Tea  at  4:00  p.m.  Talk 
at  4:30  p.m. 

February  24 

"Bosnia  and  Somalia:  Why  is  it  so 
Hard  to  End  Torture  and  Genocide?" 
William  James  Forum  lecture  by  Dr. 
Paul  Churchill,  George  Washington 
University.  Hynson  Lounge, 
7:30  p.m. 

February  25 

"Clams,  Crabs,  Eel  and  Menhaden: 
The  Biology  and  Harvesting  of 
Commercial  Species  of  the  Chesa- 
peake Bay,"  sponsored  by  the 
McLain  Program  in  Environmental 
Studies.  Alice  Jane  Lippson  and 
Robert  L.  Lippson.  Dunning  Lecture 
Hall,  7:30  p.m. 

February  25  -  27 

Drama  Production  of  "Glass 
Menagerie."  Tawes  Theatre, 
8:00  p.m. 


March  4 

The  Washington  College  Concert 
Series  presents  "The  Ravel  Trio." 
Tawes  Theatre,  8:00  p.m. 


March  5-12 

Display  of  Alex  Haley's  manuscript 
"The  Autobiography  of  Malcolm  X," 
Miller  Library. 


March  9 

Symposium  on  "The  Place  of 
Malcolm  X  in  Civil  Rights  History." 
Panelists  include  Dr.  Clayton  Carson, 
Director  of  the  Martin  Luther  King 
Papers  Project,  Stanford  University; 
Dr.  James  Early,  Public  Historian, 
Smithsonian  Institution;  and  Dr. 
Alice  Taylor,  Professor  of  African 
American  History,  Howard  Univer- 
sity. (Call  for  more  information.) 


March  27 

Jazz  Duo  featuring  Dick  Durham 
and  Victor  Belanger.  Tawes  Theatre, 
8:00  p.m. 


April  7 


April  2 


Washington  College  Community 
Chorus's  Spring  Concert  of  music  by 
Gilbert  and  Sullivan.  Tawes  Theatre, 
8:00  p.m. 


Correction 


The  Goldstein  Program  in  Public 
Affairs  presents  a  talk  by  Douglass 
Cater.  Hynson  Lounge,  7:30  p.m. 


April  18 


Theatre,  4  p.m. 


Norman  James 


April  20 

The  Washington  College  Concert 
Series  presents  "Western  Wind." 
Tawes  Theatre,  8:00  p.m. 


May  2 

Jazz  Band  Concert,  Tawes  Theatre, 
8:00  p.m. 

May  20-22 

Reunion.  See  page  26  for  schedule. 


May  23 


211th  Commencement,  Campus 
Lawn,  10:30  a.m. 

For  more  information  contact:  Jessica 
Davies,  Special  Events  Coordinator, 
(800)  422-1782,  ext.  7849.  For  a 
schedule  of  athletic  events,  call  Sarah 
Feyerherm,  Sports  Information 
Director,  (800)  422-1782,  ext.  7238. 


In  an  article  featuring  alumni  carvers  (Washington  College  Magazine  Winter 
1992)  Bryon  A.  Bodt's  name  was  spelled  incorrectly. 

In  the  Class  Notes  section,  William  C.  Tomlinson  retired  from  the  U.S.  Air 
Force  Reserves,  not  the  Naval  Reserves,  in  1986. 


VOLUME  XLI  NO. 
SPRING  1993 
USPS  667-260 


DONOR'S    PROFILE 


General  George  Washington 


In  1782  General  George  Washington 

gave  50  guineas,  a  huge  sum  in 

those  days  of  rare  hard  currency, 

for  the  establishment  of  a  college  in 

Chestertown.  Chances  are  you 

have  heard  this  story  a  hundred  J 

times.   So  why  did  he  do  it? 

The  new  nation,  which  had  miracu- 
lously fought  free  from  a  European       fa 
nation  of  immense  power,  needed 
citizens.  An  educated  class  of 
people  who  guard  their  freedoms 
and  provide  a  bulwark  against 
future  oppression.  In  other  words, 
citizens  educated  by  a  college  that 
didn't  train  men  for  the  army,  the 
church,  the  state,  or  a  particular 
governing  faction. 

In  other  words,  a  college  that 
doesn't  teach  communication  arts, 
marketing,  or  poultry  science. 

Today,  Washington  College  alumni 
are  found  to  be  poets  and  police- 
men, teachers,  writers,  business 
owners,  managers,  lawyers,  doctors, 
scientists,  farmers,  foresters,  and  m 

fund  raisers.  Almost  every  career  '>?* 

that  is  conceivable  in  our  American     /^  "--.  j 
republic  is  represented  among  the       1    \ ';' 
ranks  of  our  graduates.  The  Wash-  Jgzr' 
ington  College  experience  helped      I^T? 
them  become  good  citizens.  The        $?■:'/£'  >' 
liberal  arts  education  is  a  passport  ffl* 
to  any  branch  of  knowledge.  t      i 

We  like  to  think  George  Washington    „--  **** 
would  be  proud.  His  investment  in 
1782  was  a  good  one.  It  still  is.